Shadow Hunter vs Demon Hunter III
by Ihsan997
Summary: During the final push to retake Suramar, Kenda is embedded in a unit of strangers. The Legion was expecting them, and at the absolute worst time, Neruda wants to settle the score. (Ten chapters; final installment)
1. Laying in Wait

Kenda's heart pounded in her chest. It was time. It was finally time.

Packed like sardines, she and the unit she'd been assigned to waited inside of the basement of a palatial home in one of the residential areas of Suramar. The owner was a sympathizer with the Nightfallen Rebellion, and the forces of Azeroth had jumped at the opportunity to station sleeper cells anywhere they could in preparation for storming the Nighthold. That basement was one of many: boarded up, hidden, and ostensibly used only for storage, all right under the noses of Grand Magistrix Elisande's fanatical supporters.

Most of the two dozen or so people crammed in the basement with her were blood knights, warriors of the Sindorei who would lead the assault against the Legion-allied faction of the nightborne. Being a shadow hunter, Kenda was a member of a rare class without a hall of its own, and had to be embedded as a support class with other units. Being a forest troll, she was more than a little bit uncomfortable being assigned to a mostly blood elven unit. She wasn't prejudiced against the people herself; she really didn't care to generalize about groups of people and most of her compatriots seemed to feel the same. Regardless, there was always a measure of tension in the air, and her exchanges with the Sindorei in the group were overly formal.

Standing against the wall of the basement, Kenda felt one of the blood knights walk up next to her as she peeked out at the surface level. An obviously older fellow with scars, the redheaded elf remained silent for a few seconds.

"It's quiet...a little too quiet," he said while squinting his eyes to watch the empty street.

Although her nervous energy at the impending conflict didn't decrease, she was able to forget about it for the moment. "I not been seeing any more patrols for half an hour...something not be right," she whispered in reply.

The commanding officer, a ranger, noticed them speaking and motioned for them both to approach her at the center of the basement. Much more direct than Kenda was used to hearing from elves, she looked them both over. "When was the last time either of you saw any hostile outside?" she asked with about as much concern as a 300-year-old was likely to display.

Since she was a minority in the group, Kenda initially remained silent and expected the blood knight to speak for them. When the old man also remained silent, she started. "A wrathguard patrol was walking by over thirty minutes ago...after that, nothing. Not even imps."

For a good long while, the ranger just started at the shadow hunter. Kenda had gotten used to the tendency of elves to respond slowly and always take their sweet time to mull over every little detail, but the fact that they were all behind enemy lines automatically raised everyone's level of anxiety. Tapping her foot until she received an answer, she began to wonder if the ranger had become paralyzed by the news.

"We were told to wait here until the warhorn is blown to signal that the barrier around the Sanctum of Order is down," the ranger-commander said thoughtfully. "We'll wait until it is blown and not a moment earlier."

All of the other elves either nodded or remained still, slowly milling about, stretching, and attempting to remain alert. Aside from Kenda, the only other non-elves there was an orc grunt wearing a Silvermoon tabard and a goblin who was in charge of their munitions and rations. The latter was preoccupied by his work while the former brooded silently alongside a few of the elves who appeared just as stoic, leaving the forest troll little to do other than return to the window.

Watching for the odd demon to pass by was making her more nervous by the minute precisely because she didn't see any of them. A scout had informed them that the demons changed their patrol routes frequently based on a sort of geometry that had yet to be deciphered by mortal minds, but even an alien pattern was non existent; there was simply no pattern at all. The white-tiled marketplace in clear view was entirely empty of visibly hostile targets, being filled only with merchants and their...wait...

"You noticed it too, didn't you?"

"Hmm?" Kenda turned to her side to find the old knight speaking to her again.

"The merchants. All of their carts and stalls have been removed from the plaza."

Kenda bit her lower lip in an attempt to stave off the feeling of dread. She failed. "Yeah...but they pulled out slowly. One at a time, yeah?"

Squinting out the little window for a few seconds, the blood knight turned back to regard the commander and shook his head ever so slightly. "We could wait for a moment before we inform the commander. This is the biggest assault undertaken since Hellfire on alternate Draenor...I can envision us being blamed as rumor spreaders if we tell her and it turns out that the merchants simply moved over to another street." For the first time, he looked right at Kenda; it was the first time a blood elf had looked upon her as a respected comrade. "But we both know that isn't the case."

At a loss, Kenda sought something meaningful to say, yet found herself at the end of a progressively longer string of fails that day. "I don't like all this waiting...but I guess we can't be doing anything else," she sighed.

The sound of knuckles wrapping in the basement door caused everyone to freeze. A pin dropping would have echoed for eternity, and even the busybody goblin stopped polishing shields to listen for what the problem was. They'd been under strict orders not to move or respond to any sound until the warhorn had been blown, and the house's owner had repeatedly assured them that once he'd left them into his basement, his interaction with them would end. There was absolutely no reason for anyone to come near the basement at all.

And yet, someone was. And when they knocked a second time, a few of the elves actually shuffled and turned to look at their commander. Her stoicism turned to irritation when the voice of the homeowner waited in through the basement door's keyhole.

"Commander...please, I must speak to you now," the nightborne homeowner whispered.

Everyone froze again, looking to their leader for guidance. Visibly frowning, the ranger's irritation became so intense that most of the elves then began to lower their gazes, waiting for their leader to handle the crisis. Kenda didn't watch the petite ranger ascend the stone steps up to the ground level, but her long ears easily picked up the conversation.

"What are you doing?" the commander huffed at the homeowner angrily, though she didn't have time to say anymore.

"You have to leave! Now, ma'am!" the nightborne sympathizer with the nightfallen whispered back, immediately grabbing the attention of every living soul in the basement. Even a mouse in the corner stood on its hind leg as if enraptured by the urgency in the man's voice. "We've been double crossed!"

"Wait, slow down-"

"They know we're here! Us and two other sleeper cells! My neighbors can take you in, but you have to go _now_ -"

 _BOOM_

Kenda's ears rang as the ground shook beneath her feet. In a fraction of a second, the commander's limp body and the severed limbs of the homeowner were launched in her direction by the crash of smashed floorboards, cinderblocks, and pieces of the ceiling. By the time she'd caught her balance from stumbling, a second tremor rocked the house and caused half of the bottom floor to cave in on top of the goblin.

"Incoming!" shouted one of the blood knights before gurgling on her own blood, though she was behind Kenda and out of earshot when a combination of broken water pipes, cold water, tiles from the sidewalk outside and a freaking queen sized bed smacked into her.

The warhorn was blown.


	2. Retreat from the Plaza

A ringing sound and the dust from crushed stucco tiles greeted Kenda once she regained her balance. She'd been in this situation before: head pounding, ears ringing, mind befuddled, allies shouting, enemies charging. The typical haze which greeted an adventurer after the blast of a bomb or explosion of the arcane wasn't new, but that didn't mean it was welcome. Experience made coping with most crises easier, but waking up after area of effect damage wasn't one of those.

Curling into a ball as boots shuffled around her, Kenda waited until she was sure that pieces of ceiling had finished falling before she scrambled back to her feet. Whoever had betrayed them had planned it well: most of the three-story house had been ripped open from one side, and the searing screech of a fel cannon outside came to a halt just prior to the sound of Thalassian battle cries. When she heard the iron artillery clatter on the ground in a heap, she knew that there was at least one less threat to worry about.

The surviving blood knights and single orc rushed past her, climbing out of the basement-cum-ditch and beating back the advancing demons who'd tried to jump over the pile of rubble that was once the western facade of the house. All Kenda could see was the corpse-ridden basement, what remained of the third-story walls, and a narrow landscape image of elves and demons clashing at the ground level in between. Finally realizing that the full scale Rebellion had started, she joined the blood knights at ground level with a single leap and started casting her voodoo magic on the line of felguards clashing with her now leaderless unit.

There had been little escalation, at least based on what she could see: one minute, all had been quiet on the northwestern front, and the next minute it was utter chaos. Their unit wasn't the only sleeper cell: numerous troops, more victorious than hers, filed out of the homes of sympathizers on every street visible from her viewpoint. Sindorei blood knights, kaldorei huntresses, Orcish grunts, human footmen, tauren, worgen, all different kinds of trolls and dwarves, all of them ambushing any unsuspecting nightborne enforcers and demonic watchers at once. Cramped into the streets of Suramar, most semblances of combat formations were lost in the urban warfare, and the din of the noise was deafening.

Reaching the end of her spellcast, Kenda ignored the bad luck of her specific unit and released her voodoo, cursing a line of twenty felguards at once with ultra-sensitivity to pain. Being blood elves, the line of allied troops in front of her likely recognized the curse from experience fighting other tribes of her kind, and they all struck decisively. Every shield bash, every glaive slash, every nick and cut garnered hysterical howls of pain from the cursed felguards, cowing them into retreat far easier than she'd even expected. The blood knights charged, chasing down and hacking up the demonic infantry before it had a chance to escape, temporarily gaining a second wind.

Kenda began casting a healing wave that bounced across the handful of survivors on her side, trying her best to fulfill the hybrid role in however much precious time remained. Without an official leader, the rest of the unit quickly fell into a defensive formation, losing the momentum they'd gained as they watched Alliance, Horde and Nightfallen troops run past them toward the heat of the initial charge toward the Sanctum of Order. Ever the overly cautious elves, the blood knights said nothing as they all waited for someone else to step forward and take the lead.

The scarred old blood knight who'd been on the lookout with Kenda stepped forward. She was happy to see him alive even if she barely knew these people - she'd only been assigned to their unit the day before - and she lined up with the others when he took the initiative of stepping out in front.

"The plan shouldn't change; we'll stick together and push as far as we can," he stated, already beginning to march in a fashion uncharacteristically preemptive for elves. "Tis no better day to die than this...in the Light!"

"We are one!" replied the rest of the infantry, even the orc, as they marched after him.

As much as Kenda would have preferred to be on the front lines, she knew her role as the unit's only healer, debuffer, and stealth detector, and remained behind the front line of the dozen or so knights as they charged. They were slightly behind the initial push of infantry, however, and they had a few moments to breathe as she tried to put the ambush behind her and get her bearings.

The battle had already begun above them as well. High over their heads, the spires and walkways of the city were filled with dueling demons and champions, invołving almost every level of the place in the conflict. Where the civilians must have been hiding, she did not know. In the skies, the Burning Legion was at a distinct disadvantage; their forces seemed limited to unintelligent felbats and slow, easy-to-spot terrorfiends who were constantly on the defensive. The Alliance and Horde had a wide array of specialized aerial units, and a flaming felbat even crashed to the side of Kenda's unit.

Land and sea were different matters. An ogre deadnaught had breached Suramar's arcane sea barrier, but was slowly sinking in the harbor due to a seemingly random attack by a whale shark. Legion infantry had reacted to the rebellion in the streets in full force, and once the unit reached the open plazas of the Terrace of Order, Kenda saw a complex array of fel cannons. Hundreds of heroes and heroines from all factions tried to rush forward and preempt the gan'arg demon tinkers from operating the infernal contraptions, but the first wave was too late; flaming green balls of energy launched into the first three ranks, incinerating a sizeable portion of the most fanatical champions of the Alliance and Horde and knocking quite a few others back. The leader of Kenda's unit seemed more angry than cautious.

"For Lordaeron!" the newly branded leader of their group shouted as he lead them on a charge toward a patch of fel cannons that were busy reloading.

They were only a few dozen yards away from the contraptions. The gan'arg technicians were frantically trying to reload, though a wave of wretched Nightfallen crept out from the sewers, thankfully attacking the demons rather than the forces of Azeroth in their frenzy. The Legion's ranks fell into disarray; the Nightfallen who'd suddenly started to swarm the Grand Promenade were largely crazed addicts who were emaciated and easy to kill, but there were so many of them, and they were so ferocious, that the Alliance and Horde troops were able to reach the fel cannons before any of the contraptions could reload.

The blood knights in Kenda's unit let out war cries, victory seeming assured with the addition of the Nightfallen junkies. The Legion, however, wasn't ready to cede even that single, open plaza to the invasion force.

Far off to Kenda's left, a unit of mages stopped casting their offensive spells as their leader raised her staff. "Infernals!" the human woman yelled to everyone in the general vicinity.

Most of the champions gathered in the plaza didn't have time to react before the flaming grey stones slammed into the ground like blazing meteors. Although Kenda managed to regain her footing, several of her comrades didn't, and she temporarily lost her bearings when the meteor shower continued raining down on the plaza for a good five seconds. Green smoke blotted out the sky and obscured everyone's view beyond a few yards.

Leaving the wretched to claw and gnaw at the gan'arg and the cannons, most of the Alliance and Horde troops turned back toward the infernals, hacking away at the initial meteors in an attempt to destroy them before too many of the infernals could even fight back. The tactic was successful all things considered - the sheer number of the demonic automatons were prevented from even rising, and their numbers were so great that they might have ended the attempt to take over the Terrace had they not been put down. The old blood knight dashed forward from the rest of Kenda's unit and decapitated an infernal just as it rose, leaving its rocky body to crumble to pieces.

Whirling around to face everyone in their corner of the plaza, the scarred old blood elf clenched his glaive tightly and ignored the dead terrorfiend that crashed on the ground next to him. "Let those in front take the cannons - we must secure this corner of the Grand Promenade for reinforcements to come-"

 _CRASH_

"No!" yelled Kenda as well as a few of the surviving blood knights as the older fellow was killed by a direct infernal meteor strike.

Smashed beyond healing, the scarred old fellow laid dead as an infernal rose from his smoldering grave. The battle appeared even as the din and clang of metal rang out all around them, and even with the fel cannons mostly disabled, the Legion forces were providing a formidable defense of the Terrace. Kenda's unit was just one of many trying to hold its position and survive, and she knew there would be no aid for them; any reinforcements that did actually manage to follow in behind them would surely rush forward to join the main push of the battle ahead of their position. They were on their own despite the fact that there were other units trying to clear out infernals only about ten meters away on either side of them.

"Charge!" the orc wearing a Silvermoon tabard cried as he ran forward, smashing away a good chunk of the infernal's hand as he met the demon head on.

Swinging downward, the infernal knocked the orc fifteen feet into the air, causing the squat man to crash into a wall of one of the columns bordering the Promenade. The blood knights charged as well, less cautious than usual for elves but still more wary of their foe than the orc had been. The infernal stomped on the ground, sending up fel flames that singed the capes of all the blood knights and even the skin of a few of them. Kenda cast a healing wave across them, though the infernal began slapping and kicking at their shields, knocking them this way and that and only causing more injuries. She knew they could destroy the demon via attrition, but by definition that would lead to casualties. They needed another plan, especially since a number of units off in the distance also seemed to do nothing more than 'let's throw ourselves against the infernals and hope they die before we do.'

Digging deep, Kenda drew on her voodoo again, shaping the spell in a way she hadn't tried before. Closing her eyes for a moment during the cast, she tried to think of the fel flames holding the demon's limbs together, of her magic enveloping it like a blanket, and the loa of the winter season, demanding blood sacrifice to give her people any refuge from the cold.

"Screee!" the infernal screeched as the fel flames spilling over its body shot outward and then fizzled.

Although a creature composed of chunks of rock had no nerve endings, it did have a magical biology of its own. The fel flames that had been keeping the blood knights at bay died down, burning with a dimmer light and cooling off so much that the stone of the infernal's body cracked due to the temperature change. Not granting it a chance to strike at her comrades again, Kenda sprinted toward it and leapt into the air. Just as the infernal noticed her and turned, she landed on its intact arm, gripping it in the same way she used to climb trees as a child. It's rocky surface was hot, but not scorching, and she was able to climb up its arm and atop its shoulders without burning herself.

Her comrades realized what she was doing, but fell back when felguard reinforcements reached the Promenade before those of the Alliance or Horde did. Pandemonium ensued as the remaining blood knights were forced to turn away from her and meet a felguard charge, holding the demons back as the two sides pushed against each other. Kenda was out of options.

Desperation thankfully overpowered fear, and rather than jumping down and ceding her advantage, she ignored the infernal's attempt to dislodge her and wrapped her arms and legs around its head. Twisting her body, she was able to stretch her back until the fel bonds that held the demon's head on - already weakened by her curse - dissipated. The head popped off, leaving the body to crumble, and she tumbled to the ground with a stone head in her arms. Although she was as agile as they came, a felguard and blood knight had killed each other behind her, and she hadn't even know they were there when she fell on them. The wind was knocked out of her, but she at least was able to keep track of the battle. Many of the Alliance and Horde troops were retreating; the wretched Nightfallen seemed to have disabled the fel cannons, but the Legion had received infantry reinforcements first, and the demons were slowly retaking the full length of the Grande Promenade.

Kenda was alone, without an exact plan, and had no direct field commander to whom she could answer. Lady Liadrin had assigned her to that specific unit of blood knights, but the paladin had assigned countless others, was behind the front lines during the initial push, and probably wouldn't remember her - factional commanders met hundreds of people every day. Kenda would have to retreat, regroup, and restart once she found another unit of troops to march with in a counterattack (the surviving blood knights were scattered, some of them beyond her vision). Falling back, she cast short, weak curses as the advancing felguards to cause them enough pain to slow them down. A few soldiers might have been saved because of her efforts, but she wouldn't ever known since she also had to focus on jumping over corpses and debris as she left the entire Terrace of Order for the relative safety of one of Suramar's many market districts below. Most of the other heroes fled with their units, leaving stragglers like her to scatter into the streets of the market without the protection of a group. The walls of the buildings were high, providing cover from the view of any Legion scouts as she sought a place to catch her breath.

"Ahh!" she gasped as she rounded a corner on an empty market street and found a lone demon staring her down at the other end.

No...wait. Not a demon.

"Nowhere to run?" the horned figure staring her down from across the street taunted.

Angry, flustered, and confused, Kenda caught her breath for a moment as she tried to figure out what the heck the other adventurer could want at a time like that. The individual had most likely retreated as well, and now was not the time for them to blow off steam with chit chat.

Memories from weeks prior flooded back into her mind all at once when she noticed the style of knot on the left side of the eyeless night elf's blindfold.

"Neruda?" Kenda snapped. "What you be-"

"It's time!" Neruda screamed, stomping on the ground and wielding her war glaives.


	3. Suramar Street Fight

The forest troll and the night elf stared each other down at either end of the narrow street. The sound of battles all over Suramar echoed atop the roofs of the buildings above, but in the narrow and winding streets of the market district, much of the sound was muffled. Maybe the heroes of Azeroth were all on the run; maybe the counterattack had already begun. Kenda wouldn't know, because Neruda displayed no intention of getting out of her way.

Both of them were breathing heavily, and Kenda could tell that her interlocutor had obviously retreated from the battle in the Grande Promenade as well. The sane thing to do would be to set their previous conflicts aside, search for other survivors, and try to join larger surviving units so they could participate in the push toward the Nighthold and actually make themselves useful. All of the planet's nations and factions had united for the singular purpose of removing the Burning Legion's foothold on Azeroth, and the clearest logical choice was for the shadow hunter and demon hunter to set aside their differences and work side by side, if not together, for the greater good.

But, silly Kenda...what made her think the mad elf was either sane or logical?

"I've tracked you for a month, Revantusk...I've followed your every movement," Neruda said in a threateningly harsh emphasis on the consonants as she spoke. "Every step you've taken, every choice you've made has led you right here...right now. This was inevitable."

Annoyed beyond belief, Kenda tried to stave off images of the glorious waves of soldiers marching off to stop Elisande without her. "Okay first of all, you a creep. Second of all, stop talking like you be some melodramatic revenge seeker. You just be mad cause we had a misunderstanding-"

"You _tied_ me to a _tree_!" Neruda screamed, way too loudly considering the fact that they were both on the retreat.

"-and you don't be understanding priorities. Well you and me don't have a choice now! This not be the time!"

" **I** say when it isn't the time, and it is the time, because I said!" Neruda stomped her feet again and opened her arms up in a taunt, swinging around her war glaives. "You might have cheated your way out of rounds one and two, but not this time!"

Beckoning to the insane elf, Kenda tried to relax her stance and reason with the nutter. "Neruda, _think_! This not be the time! You wanna fight, I promise you a duel when this all be over-"

"No! No! I don't want a duel...I want your blood! You _hog tied_ me and left me on a beach!"

"Cause you attacked me first!"

Kenda immediately realized her mistake when her imperfect enemy became visibly excited by the response to her argument. "And the Horde attacked my people first, you instigator!" Neruda screamed furiously.

"What the...? That be a racist generalize..." Kenda stopped herself and face palmed at her own folly for a moment before continuing. If she tried to argue with Neruda, then the idiot would only drag her down and beat her with experience. "Hun, please listen to me, we both got bigger fish to fry. We gotta stop the Legion; after that, you can have your chance to-"

"Enough!" Neruda screamed, her tattoos crackling with powerful fel energy in a way that Kenda hadn't seen on other demon hunters before. "I will have my revenge! No one has the right to stop me!"

Echoing down the narrow market street and bouncing from every direction at once, the sound of Neruda's shoes thumped as she started to sprint. Kenda sighed and pulled out her fel blades, gripping the sharp weapons against the length of her forearms as she resigned herself to the demonic distraction. She knew that Neruda was extremely dangerous, but also foolish, hasty, and impatient. Kenda had defeated the night elf twice before, and if Neruda wanted to waste time during the most significant battle of the decade, then the forest troll was prepared to wound her more permanently this time.

Walking and preparing for a defensive stance to feel out her opponent, Kenda moved her hands in the motion of her spellcasting in an attempt to fake her opponent out. Strangely, Neruda didn't take the bait, instead leaping up into the air and brining her war glaive down against Kenda's fel blades. The force was stronger than their previous fights, and Neruda actually knocked Kenda back about ten feet. Kenda retained her stance, letting her feet leave the ground as she flew backward from the blow and slid to a safe stop. Neruda was stronger than the last time, but when stuck in a narrow backstreet without the ability to move 360 degrees, the demon hunter would likely be at a disadvantage.

So Kenda took her turn to charge, hoping to use her size advantage and gain some ground. Keeping one blade up for defense, she reared back with the other as she ran, prepared for her strike be blocked but certain that she would knock Neruda off balance.

Except Neruda didn't block; she leapt way back.

"Oh!" Kenda gasped as she stumbled when her strike connected only with the air. Though she managed to catch herself, she leaned forward too far, and realized she'd left herself wide open when Neruda rushed back.

"Hhrrraaa!" cried the familiar chain smoker's voice as Neruda capitalized on Kenda's error.

Kenda raised one of her blades to protect herself, but her other raised just a quarter of a second too slow. Leaving two trails of fel fire behind her, Neruda dashed forward and brought her own weapon on the opposite side to bear, dragging it across Kenda's arm and shoulder. Pain shot through the shadow hunter's entire arm as a fine slice was opened up from her bicep to her deltoids, causing her thick troll blood to seep out like the sap of a tree. She hadn't expected the move at all because Neruda had maintained the bad habit of screaming her techniques out loud as she performed them in their previous fights. The horned woman had learned from her mistakes.

Ignoring the pain, Kenda brought up the blade she held in her good arm, forcing her opponent to parry. As a foolish reaction of her own, Kenda started to cast one of her curses as she pushed Neruda back, leading the demon hunter to simply consume the spell. Kenda's core felt empty as her curses were locked and a bit of her mana extinguished, and her eyes shot open wide when she realized that she'd given up her ability to debuff so early in the fight. In their last fight, it had returned to her after a few moments, but fights that intense often lasted only a few moments anyway.

None of Neruda's taunts and battle cries were to be heard. They'd been a distraction to the nutcase in the previous fights, and this time, her more intense focus was apparent in her speed. Twisting her glaives sideways as she and Kenda shoved their weapons against each other, Neruda forced the shadow hunter to raise the blade held in her injured arm in defense. Two perpendicular equal signs were formed in between them, but Kenda felt the weakness on her left side when the shoving match caused her wound to bleed more profusely.

Blood was figuratively in the water, and Neruda capitalized. Beneath her blindfold, her empty eye sockets started to burn brightly, and the memory of their first encounter haunted Kenda. Out in the open on the beach, Neruda's eye beam had been of little use since she seemed to lose her ability to pivot quickly when blasting it; stuck in that narrow alleyway, her ability to blade dance was negated. At the last possible second, though, Kenda realized that she'd walked into another type of trap when she'd charged into the narrow street, and there was nowhere to retreat from what came next.

"Aaarrrgghhh!" both of them screamed at the same time - Neruda because, ostensibly, the eye beam burned even when on the giving end, and Kenda because it _really_ burned on the receiving end.

A sort of laser that existed in a state somewhere between gas and plasma sprayed across the entire backstreet. The eye beam washed over Kenda's arms, forehead, shoulders, and hands like fuming napalm, causing her to drop her weapons as she tried to shield herself in vain. The pain was absolutely excruciating, and although it didn't kill her the way that non-magical fire might have, she could feel her skin searing with a level of hurt that she'd never felt in her life.

Unable to see as she shielded her face, all Kenda could do was back up and cast her healing wave, which thankfully wasn't spell locked. She knew if she jumped backward with her eyes closed, she might fall down and it would be the end of her. Instead, she crouched and walked backward slowly, taking more direct damage from the eye beam but trying to frantically heal herself as she backed up.

To her horror, the smell and sound of green embers crackled, and as the eye beam and healing wave both cleared, she saw a smoldering demon standing where Neruda had been. The horned woman's metamorphosis caused her to grow and glow, and Kenda actually found her strength and reach advantages negated once the lithe night elf had transformed into an ugly demon.

Instead of shouting a slur, mega-Neruda brought down a chaos strike, narrowly missing as Kenda backpedaled. Although the forest troll had healed much of the aesthetic damage to her skin, she was still seriously hurt by the eye beam, low on health, and in throbbing pain. She'd dropped her blades somewhere behind Neruda and thus was unarmed, left with only backward or forward as her options. In spite of her pain, she chose forward, and surprised mega-Neruda by shooting in low and hooking her arms around the back of the demon elf's leg.

Hissing from the pain of touching anything at all with her fel-tainted skin, Kenda forced herself to push forward and twist her opponent's leg off the ground. Neruda's transformation had made her more powerful, but she mustn't have had an overbearing brother to practice wrestling moves in her like Kenda did, because the forest troll managed to grapple the raging demon and pull her off balance with a bit of work. Pushing Neruda into the brick wall on one side of the little street, Kenda forced the demon elf to slide back against the smooth surface until they hit a window. Thrusting forward, Kenda forced them both through the glass pane, smashing through and sending them tumbling to the kitchen floor of a looted nightborne household.

If Kenda had been in pain beforehand, slamming Neruda through the window put the forest troll into a whole new level of hurt. She writhed in agony, almost unable to stand again as she drastically grabbed on to a countertop to pull herself up. Out of desperation, she tried to cast a curse of weakness to see if her dark magic was still spell locked. She didn't have time to find out.

Springing to her misshapen feet, Neruda pounced on her prize, grabbing ahold of Kenda and choking her. Swinging the eight-foot-tall troll woman around, Neruda actually lifted her victim up off the ground like a beanbag. Kenda felt lightheaded as she flew across the kitchen of the looted house, though the floor-to-ceiling cabinetry separating the kitchen from the den broke her fall.

Smashing through two layers of wooden cupboards and an interior wall, Kenda was rocked as if she'd been hit by a Bilgewater stun grenade. The cabinetry broke completely, and she fell out the other side onto a throw rug, covered in broken plates and her own blood. Her head spinning, she found herself lacking the coordination to check justnhow many splinters and porcelain shards had stabbed into her body, and the wind had been knocked out of her so fast that she couldn't inhale for a few seconds. Smoldering embers glowed out of her field of vision as Neruda's metamorphosis ended, and the mad elf finally relaxed and reverted to her normal manic, aggressive self.

Strolling over to Kenda, Neruda knelt down over her prize, pulling Kenda by the hair to force the defeated troll to look up at her. At that point, there was not much else Kenda could do except breathe and blink. A positively evil grin spread across Neruda's lips, and the rebellion in Suramar and indeed all else was forgotten.

"You're mine, now."


	4. The Abandoned House

Kenda couldn't even remember how many times Neruda hit her.

She did have to give the nutjob credit. Few people could punch anything that many times, bare-knuckled, without wincing or resting their wrists. Neruda wailed on her like a child who'd gotten their first punching bag for their birthday, possibly working out more psychological issues during the ten-minute beating than during all the hour-long anger management sessions at the counselor's office in Dalaran. If it weren't for the fact that Kenda didn't particularly enjoy being beaten to a pulp, she'd almost have to respect the mad elf for her devotion.

Since Neruda wasn't in her metamorphosis form, she couldn't hit nearly as hard as before, but she certainly didn't seem to be discouraged by that fact. She even punched Kenda's legs a bunch of times...Kenda didn't even know anybody would bother punching another person in the legs. Neruda had simply turned into a ball of fury when throttling the downed victim. Eventually, the purple-haired perpetrator had worn herself out, and had rolled Kenda up in the throw rug on the floor of the looted house.

Recovering from a world of hurt, Kenda merely laid inside the rug like a hot dog waiting to be eaten by a fat kid seeking comfort food. In full view of her, Neruda sat on a couch in the den of the house and sharpened her war glaives. The act was an obvious threat, but after having just lost round three, Kenda was in no shape to unroll herself from the rug and initiate a round four. Now she knew how Neruda must have felt after their first two fights.

There were a lot of things Kenda could have said. Once she wasn't being pummeled like it was going out of style, her mind was clear enough to remember that, you know, there was kind of a war going on. Against the Burning Legion. In the biggest invasion their planet had ever seen. And there they were, abandoning the battlefield so Neruda could make some sort of a point.

But the appeal to the greater good couldn't start like that. The crazed demon hunter obviously wasn't listening to reason; she'd need to be informed of the error of her ways via a more emotional appeal. Unfortunately, crazy was a language Kenda didn't speak.

She didn't have to initiate anything, though. Obviously having harbored quite a bit of anger after Kenda beat her ass so easily in the past, Neruda was finally ready to gloat.

"I didn't realize that your race regenerates so fast," Neruda said while continuing to sharpen her war glaive. "The bruises on your face disappeared so quickly that it almost felt like a waste not to put more there all over again. Sort of like those ghost pens, where the ink disappears...you want to just keep on writing and writing." She stopped sharpening for a second and finally looked up at her catch. "Right?" she asked with a smug grin.

Observing and planning, Kenda tried to think of a way to escape. To force Neruda's guard down, to trick the horned woman into letting her get back up, to cast a curse so quietly that it would go unnoticed. She'd have to play the game if she wanted to survive.

"Yeah...that make sense," she replied flatly, trying to conceal any sort of a reaction.

Neruda stared at her intensely, but the nutjob failed to wipe off her grin completely. "You know what happens next," she said. It wasn't a question.

When the night elf didn't move, Kenda realized that 'crazy' and 'focused' weren't mutually exclusive. Tricking her way out of the situation would be more difficult than she might have expected. Had she ever expected to be in such a situation in the first place, of course. Looking for a way to stall, she tried to force her captor to talk more.

"What be happening next?" she asked while pretending to hesitate.

Unable to hide her sick joy any longer, Neruda flashed her fangs this time. Her nostrils started to flare like a nerd who was about to prove somebody wrong, and Kenda could tell that whatever came next was meant to elicit a strong reaction. "I'm going to kill you," she replied in a bizarrely innocent voice like a child revealing who stole the cookie jar.

Resigned dread was an odd emotion. It was unfamiliar, for sure, since Kenda had never been in such a situation before. She didn't bother looking at the door and wondering at which split second her brother or one of her friends would barge in to save her. She didn't bother listening for a second warhorn or a Legion victory bell to signal the end of the rebellion. She didn't even wallow in self-pity as she faced down a psycho with a sharp object who'd wrapped her up like a fly in a spider's web. She mainly just thought about the afterlife and wondered if it would be as awesome as it was in all the stories.

Nobody was busting the door down to but a stop to this. Nobody even knew they were there. Hell, Kenda didn't even know where exactly they were in the city. Alone, away from her family, and in a random abandoned villa, she was going to die. Not valiantly against the Burning Legion, but against a psychopath who had no comprehension of priorities.

Perhaps it was Kenda's ego, or her healthy self-esteem depending on one's view, but she found herself surprisingly indifferent. If Neruda wanted to kill her, then begging would only encourage the mad elf and prolong the suffering. The balanced troll refused to grant her enemy that satisfaction.

"Yeah, okay. Like, whatever."

Like an open book whose cover was a heart on a sleeve, Neruda's mouth shot open in surprise. Like a mental patient with a brand new personality every few minutes, her mouth quickly snapped shut as she neared her teeth. Then she forced a fake evil grin again.

"I'm going to kill you," she repeated.

Letting her head rest on the floor, Kenda had a new purpose in however many seconds she had left to live: to rob her captor of any sort of joy that might be derived from her murder. With quite literally nothing else to live for, Kenda forced herself to be as passive aggressive as possible.

"Sounds good."

Calcium grit with a dangerous force as Neruda's fake grin contorted into a real sneer. Long eyebrows arched down furiously, her shoulders tensed up and she stopped sharpening her war glaive. She was like an infant, totally lacking any sort of pretense.

"I...I said I'm going to-"

"I don't got all day, hun."

"Rrrrr! You! Rrraaa!" Neruda growled, positively indignant that she'd been interrupted, and then beyond angry once her eyeless brow shot up in realization at what her captive had said. "I-I'm going to kill you! See this?"

Neruda stood up and lifted one of her war glaives, slowly waving the weapon as if putting it up for display at an auction house.

"This is my war glaive. There are many like it, but this one is mind. And I'm going to use it..." She paused for dramatic effect. "To kill you," she added, lowering the tone of her voice as if trying to emphasize that she meant serious business.

Pulling up every memory of being bullied as a child, Kenda started to channel all the qualities she hated most in people. Every jerk she'd every met lived in through her mocking, condescending expression, which was accentuated by the fact that her whole body below the neck was wrapped up in a rug and thus not visible.

"Nope. You can't be killing me."

Trying a dismissive act of her own, Neruda pretended to inspect her weapon as she mock-executed an imaginary opponent. "Oh really? And why is that, miss...miss...rug face?"

Laughing in a way that would have made Kenda want to slap herself had she seen herself in a mirror, she taunted her captor despite being at such a disadvantage. "Cause you don't have the _guts_ ," she snickered.

There. Right there. Not so much the way that Kenda snickered like a schoolyard tormenter, no. It was the word. The moment that she implied Neruda didn't have the stomach to execute her, the elf's entire countenance changed. Her grip on her war glaive loosened, and her spine shivered like a cold draft had blown over the room.

"We'll see how smart you are when I slice your head off, miss rug face. You're wrapped up in a rug, and I won-"

"Quit stalling."

"Shut up! Shut! Up!" Neruda screeched at being interrupted again. Snatching the corner of the rug, Neruda dragged her to the other side of the room and then pulled her in a weird half circle as if trying to rough her up some more. "Don't prolong the inevitable-"

"Wimp."

"Rrrraaa!" Neruda grabbed the edge of the rug and tried to swing it around. Without her metamorphosis form, she wasn't quite strong enough to throw the troll, and ended up spinning Kenda around instead. "No! Shut your mouth, I will not allow you to speak!"

"You just mad cause you can't kill me."

"I'll show you, Horde scum!"

Grabbing a fistful of forest green braids, Neruda dragged her captive by the hair back over to the couch. Enraged but also visibly upset, she grabbed her other war glaive and swung it in the air as if performing a practice strike.

"You just a wimpy freak."

This time, Neruda kicked her. Although it was a clean shot, Kenda was wrapped up in the thick rug, and it didn't really hurt. Laughing in the most disrespectfully asinine voice she could muster, she tried to torment her captor as much as she could, no longer even thinking about life or death.

"That's all you got, freak?" she taunted.

"I AM NOT A FREAK!"

A swift kick met the side of Kenda's head, legitimately pissing her off and causing her to forget the fact that she was technically at the nutjob's mercy. Determined to get inside of Neruda's head, she verbally unleashed.

"You a crazy ass freak with no eyes, and that be why none of the other night elves like you!"

"Liieeesss!" Neruda screamed while reaching for her weapon again. Sitting on the rug to pin her victim down, she grabbed Kenda by the throat and lifted her blade as if she were about to strike. It was now or never.

" _And you not be strong enough to kill me cause you don't even like yourself!"_

A swift gust of air was heard, whistling so sharply that it almost hurt Kenda's ears. It took her a few seconds to realize that the sound was coming from Neruda's mouth, and the madwoman coughed roughly on her own spittle. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, neither of them moving. Despite the position they were in, it was Neruda who looked absolutely devastated. She couldn't have appeared more vulnerable if she'd been stripped naked, or simply beaten up and rolled in a throw rug, and her wrist actually gave way as if the glaive was suddenly too heavy for her to hold. The metal clattered on the tile floor, breaking both of them out on their stupor.

In spite of Kenda's anger at the terrible trashing she'd endured, the expression on Neruda's face was painful to look at. Trembling and shaking her head, the psycho elf kept moving her lips even when no sound came out. Giving up, she crawled away from the rug as if Kenda were a ticking time bomb, lashing out with an imprisonment spell as if the confused troll were going to chase her down with more stinging taunts.

Held in place by the demonic snare, Kenda watched Neruda stumble out of the den of the looted household and practically fall through the bathroom door, even locking it behind her as if she'd be followed. Crying to herself alone, she finally left Kenda with enough space to breathe and wonder just how the hell she was going to escape.


	5. And the Truth Comes Out

For another ten minutes, Kenda struggled with the constant imprisonment spells. Even through the bathroom wall, Neruda could see her, and the bipolar elf would occasionally pause her sobbing fits to cast another imprisonment in the troll. The ordeal was maddening as well as stressful. Once she was left alone, Kenda couldn't stop thinking about the supposedly final battle to breach the Nighthold, the ultimate solution to bring down Elisande's power barrier, and the perfect plan to retake the Broken Shore. Precious time was being lost.

"Hah! Hah! Hah!" Kenda gasped as she tried to unravel herself from the rug.

Every time she heaved, she ended up sliding back into her previous position. The frustration was somewhat akin to trying to scoop up the last piece of rice with a spoon: the more she tried, the quicker she failed. In addition to her friends from previous Horde campaigns, there was her brother, new people she'd met, even a few members of the Alliance she'd spoken to in Dalaran, all of them out there on the front lines. Ignoring the sobbing mess in the bathroom, she tried to fight against the imprisonment spell, but to no avail. She felt as if both all of Azeroth and even the Twisting Nether was leaving her behind.

The occasional sounds of battle reached her ears, and she wondered which side was winning. Everything sounded far away, and she became even more annoyed when Neruda cast another imprisonment spell through the wall. Not only had the night elf attacked her without provocation months prior, but she was now thrusting her own weird self-worth issues onto Kenda and preventing both of them from doing the job of defending their planet. For how long would she have to be stuck in an abandoned house with her relentless enemy?

Kenda froze when she heard commotion directly outside in the narrow local street. Since she'd broken the window when ramming herself and Neruda through it, every sound that bounced off of the brick walls reached her. The only reason she hadn't heard anything so far was simply because the quarter of the city they were in must have been empty of combatants. At least, until now.

The crackle of fel energy alarmed her even more, and the voices of night elves only confused her. The people approaching obviously weren't nightborne, felborne, or demon hunters, so the makeup of the approaching group didn't make any sense.

A cat-like growl echoed outside the house, but it wasn't a shapeshifted night elf. It sounded somewhat akin to a sabre, but warped like a demon hunter's voice, and whining like a pet that had lost its master. The sounds approached closer, and Kenda's inability to move caused her to panic almost as much as the way that the bathroom door swung open.

"Octavion!" Neruda cried tearlessly as burst out of her seclusion and toward the front door of the house.

The door began to open out of Kenda's field of vision, and she heard the footsteps of more night elves enter. "That's definitely her," a man said, his voice tainted with hesitation.

Paws padded on the floor as a fel sabre entered the home, and Neruda threw her arms around the animal. "Octavion, I thought you were dead!" she sighed, and the sabre sounded like it was trying to lick her.

The footsteps of five more elves reached Kenda's ears, all of them walking slowly and warily. They paused without speaking, and the troll paused with them. Kenda would be counting on those strangers to either talk some sense into their comrade, or at least bring her with them and leave.

Instead, a much more interesting reaction took place.

"Neruda Brightleaf... _what_ is the meaning of this?" asked another one of the ladies.

'This' obviously referred to the forest troll wrapped up in a rug on the floor. Said forest troll breathed a little bit easier at the irate tone of the newcomer's voice.

Whether that tone was lost on Neruda or the elven devil was simply playing dumb, she started to speak manically. "Ah, I know why you came! I knew you'd all come, and I knew why. Look!" Her feet pattered daintily as she rushed over to Kenda, rolling the shadow hunter over and allowing the two sides to view each other for the first time.

A five-person group of night elves stood at the door, looking like a mixed group capable of functioning as its own individual strike team. None of them ventured too far inside, and judging by the looks of pure shock on their faces, their reactions were as Kenda had hoped. The fel sabre was obviously Neruda's, as the big mount rolled in the floor like a kitten once it was near her.

One of the two druids circled his lip up at her in disgust. "What's the meaning of this?" he asked, though the direction of his ire was entirely lost on its target.

"Perfect, isn't it? It is, it is!" Neruda chirped, completely oblivious to the way her fellow elves gazed upon her in disapproval. "I knew I struggled here, but I've finally come through? Don't you, don't you see? I finally did it, just like you all did at Alterac! _I'm a champion_!"

One of the two archers furrowed her brows in confusion. "The Alterac Mountains? You mean...you can't be serious!" the archer explained, appearing sincerely offended. "Brightleaf, that was _years_ ago! We don't take part in factional conflicts against the Horde anymore!"

Nervous, shaken, and failing miserably at hiding it, Neruda only became more manic. "Come on, everyone else, you see the beauty here! I told you all I'd get my glory back, I did! I keep my promises!"

"Stop," a priestess who appeared to be their commander ordered.

Neruda ignored her entirely, patting Kenda like a piece of meat on display at a deli. "Ada, can you see?" she asked the priestess. "Remember when you took down that rogue that was sapping all of our huntresses? You made me dream of one day-"

"Don't blame this on her," the archer interjected, causing that almost painful expression to invade Neruda's face again.

"Or anyone else for that matter," added the druid.

Dropping her mouth open like before, Neruda appeared to do her best impression of a fish out of water. She was obviously as shocked as the others were, and became even more frantic as she tried to show off Kenda like some sort of a trophy.

"Don't you see, Ada? We can all go back to the way things were!" she pleaded with the priestess. "Everything can be the same, just like it used to be!"

"Stop," Ada repeated. "Just stop."

"Nothing has to change, it's still me! I'm still _me_! And this proves it-"

"Ma'am, are you alright? Can you hear me?" the druid asked Kenda slowly, though it took her a second to realize that he was talking to her. The very public snub of Neruda was obvious, and it only made the horned woman jumpier.

"I'm in control here, Nevis!"

"You control nothing," Ada said while tightly gripping the hilt of a sword at her belt. "Including yourself. Back off."

Another standoff ensued, and Kenda felt waves of relief wash over her like an evening tide as the five newcomers stood against her captor. Their stoic expressions formed a personal barrier, and any sort of sympathy which Neruda's devastated face might have elicited was blocked out. The nutter began to back away with her sabre, warily eyeing Ada's sword.

"Ada...what is this?" Neruda asked, though her tone was clearly forced. She was terrible at playing dumb.

The priestess appeared to have heard enough. Her eyes didn't leave her fel-tainted counterpart, and her caution implied that the group had dealt with Neruda's behavior previously.

"Neruda Brightheart, I will only say this one time. What you've done is an affront to the mission the High Priestess tasked you with. We were entrusted to extract you and other survivors of the skirmish on the Terrace of Order, and you've instead chosen to assault a citizen of what is, for the time being, a faction not considered our enemy."

"You've got it all wrong-"

"Our people are dying out there so this planet can live, and you're instead putting the temporary truce with the Horde at risk. Deriliction of duty is the least of what I could have you charged with."

"Please, **please** , just let me talk-"

"If I ever needed a better example of why you're a danger to those around you, this is it. Now...we're going to take custody of this woman, heal her wounds, and see to it that she's back in the battle - embedded even with the Alliance, if need be. You will step aside, keep your hands where I can see them, and make no move toward your weapons until I certify that this building is cleared of any living being other than _you_.

"Do? I? Make? My? Self? Clear?"

All eyes were on the eyeless one, forming a circle around her. Kenda wisely remained silent, delighted that she'd been saved and eager to get back into action. That being said, it was hard not to pity Neruda when the proverbial black sheep backed up, slid down onto the couch, and buried her face in her hands. Loa damn it all, the woman had stalked Kenda for weeks, assaulted her without provocation, and smacked her around like a piñata, and yet Kenda still felt a little bit sorry for Neruda when the outcast elf was essentially disavowed by what appeared to be her former guild mates. There was no logical reason for the forest troll to feel that way, yet on at least a miniscule level, she did.

Nevis, one of the druids, unraveled Kenda from the rug while the other helped her up. One of the archers had apparently left and reentered the abandoned house, bearing Kenda's fel blades. "I believe these are your property," the hooded woman said apologetically.

"Thanks," she said while accepting her gear back. Although she'd met a few night elves in Dalaran who weren't rude to her - one in particular was quite the opposite - she was unused to having a group of the odd (in her eyes) creatures all working together to help her. "I don't know what I can be saying."

Ada, who until that point had been intimidating Neruda into a curled up ball of shame, glanced askew at the shadow hunter. "It isn't personal; just duty-"

Her sentence was cut off as deja vu declared itself the word of the day. A blast battered the side of the building, though instead of breaking down the wall, the ceiling broke directly over the priestess' head. A felguard fell through, slicing the priestess open in the process. By the time one of the archer's had one-shotted the demon, its comrades had already broken down the back door of the house.


	6. Escape Above the Alleys

The back door, its frame, and a portion of the wall were smashed inward as a row of felguards charged straight into the building. Their conversation must have been spied on, because the sneak attack from one floor up was simply too perfect. The two archers backed up toward the front door as they let loose with their bows, but several more felguards fell in through the ceiling. Their bodies formed living shields for their fellows who'd snuck in through the back, and their corpses provided perfect launching pads to leap off of.

"Ada!" Neruda and Nevis both cried as they dove for the priestess' dead body.

When they reached her, Nevis shoved the demon hunter off roughly, pulling the priestess over to him. "Don't you touch her!" he hissed, pulling Ada's corpse over toward the front door as his colleague tried to hold the felguards back with his staff.

The demons were rapidly falling to the shots of the archers, but Neruda appeared unaware as she fell back into her fel sabre. "Nevis?" she practically begged him. "Please, it's still me-"

"I don't even know who you are anymore!" he fired back.

Unaware of the drama between the elves and, frankly, unconcerned, Kenda backed into the kitchen and started to heal herself from Neruda's torture. Although her regeneration had done much of the job, she'd never been burned by fel fire before, and wanted to feel absolutely certain that she was combat ready before rushing in to fight.

"Behind you!" shouted one of the archers to Kenda.

Without even looking back, Kenda lashed out to the side with one o her blades, decapitating a felguard that had been peeking in through the broken kitchen window. A second reached in from the alleyway and tried to swipe at her with its axe, but promptly lost its whole arm for the effort. The back door was on fire from something - she couldn't see what - and fel spiders were crawling in through the hole in the ceiling. Neruda appeared in shock by the condemnation of the other elves, and only reluctantly lifted her weapons to slay the first few demons that came at her. The house was quickly being overrun.

Too cautious to stick her head out the window, Kenda charged for the front door, attacking the felguards from behind and cutting them all down. She hadn't been able to see the results of the scuffle from behind them, but once they fell lifeless to the floor, the noticed that the druid who'd been holding them at bay with his staff had been fatally impaled, and he collapsed with them.

The two archers continued to back up, though one of them tried to drag the man's corpse with them. Knowing that the people were in her side and they were all surrounded, Neruda grabbed Nevis by the cloak, dragged him out the door with her, and shoved the grieving archer out of the house.

"Move! They be gone, we gotta move!"

Despite being far older and ostensibly wiser than her, the three elves listened, and they fled into the streets. Most of the tarps and awnings in the market were on fel fire, and stragglers like them had filled the streets almost as much as the demon swarms. By the looks of the disorganized nature of the Alliance and Horde heroes, they were all behind enemy lines and under attack by a Legion sweep; explosions higher up in the city signaled that the main push of the battle was happening elsewhere. Neruda's fel sabre dragged her out by the britches and cast the outcast elf into the street with them. Enemy or not, they were all fighting for their lives now.

Kenda looked up and saw more Alliance and Horde aerial troops dominating the skies. The walkways and bridges connecting the upper levels of Suramar were less busies with combat, providing more space to breathe and regroup.

She started to run down the little street, making her way toward the thickest patch of vines that she could find on the sides of the tall buildings. "Climb! We gotta climb!" she yelled.

Jogging to an intersection of the small local streets, she hung back at the last second as a flaming cart covered in imps whizzed past them. She hadn't seen chaos like this since the storming of the Dark Portal to alternate Draenor, and battlefield tactics gave way to individual duels and backstabbing as heroes of every race and nation tried to beat back the frenzied waves of demons pushing through the streets like a fiery flood. Kenda cut down more than a few that tried to rush their group, though the archers took out most of the attackers until one of them screamed from behind. Not daring to look back, she leapt over a wooden privacy barrier and into the seating area of what was once a café. Especially thick vines used to grow the grapes for arcwine crept up the building, and Nevis began to chant some sort of an elven hymn when they reached the safety of the fenced in café.

Green swirls of nature magic twirled around the vines, causing them to enlarge and thicken to the point where the facade of the building cracked. The wooden privacy barrier behind them cracked too, and the sound of dozens of felhounds spurred Kenda to jump.

A felhound nipped at her heels and just barely missed as she grabbed ahold of the leafy vines. Living up to her name, the forest troll crept up the vegetation with ease, even swerving left and right in her way up to avoid projectiles that were thrown at her. She could hear Nevis breathing heavily to her side, but the sound of the second archer screaming all the way down to the ground signaled that they'd lost another soldier. As much as it hurt to leave someone behind, Kenda reminded herself that dropping back down would only cause them to die as well: that section of the city was firmly under Legion control.

A rusty red dot in the sky grew into a blob against the clouds, and a line intersecting the blob caused her to stop climbing. "Incoming demon!" she warned Nevis while hugging up closer against the wall of the building that seemed to rise up foreve.

A terrorfiend impaled with the dark spear of a Darkspear crashed into the side of the building, tumbling downward and crushing the other demons that had started to climb up the vines after them. As much as Kenda detested the Darkspear tribe, she'd never been more thankful to see one of their trademark weapons.

When their path above was clear, Kenda started to climb again, focusing her gaze in the ledge above. The specific building they were climbing on seemed to be five stories high and led to the highest level of Suramar aside from the outer walls and the Terrace of Order. If they could just reach the ledge, they could catch their breath and clear their minds...

"We almost be there, mister Nevis!" she huffed as she continued to pull herself up. When he didn't answer, she began to worry. "Mister Nevis?"

A view askew revealed that he was neither climbing next to her nor trapped in the streets below, though she did catch a glimpse of the poor archer who'd been hacked to death by several shivarra, who themselves were crushed by the impaled terrorfiend. Once again, Kenda was alone, without an ally, officer or unit to her name. The importance of reaching the top of the building couldn't be more apparent.

But neither could her misfortune...

...she'd reached the end of the vines.

For a good long while, she ignored the clash of metal echoing from every conceivable direction and just stared up at the edge of the roof. Time stood still for her, and the head-on collision of a hippogriff and a felbat didn't even grab her attention.

"No...no, no, no, I be so close!" she whined, wondering what she'd done wrong to end up in such a spot.

The vines ended a good distance below the edge of the roof, leaving a distance perhaps equivalent to her own height bare. She could perform vertical backflips and even leap from treebranch to treebranch back in the Hinterlands, but she couldn't leap up the sheer surface of a building while hugging on to leafy vines. Or at least, she didn't believe she could.

The battle showed no sign of stopping. The power shield was visible over the Nighthold, but the steady stream of Kaldorei and Sindorei troops into Suramar's main streets and plazas indicated that the fight was far from over. She had a decent view of the city, if partially obscured by the similarly tall buildings across from her, but she could see many promising signs. The whale shark in the harbor was floating dead and the dreadnaught at least hadn't sunk. A surprisingly large number of aerial troops chases the flying demons in the skies, and the power barrier flickered at least once. Only her area seemed to be under firm Legion control.

"Just my luck..." she laughed both to and at herself as she pressed her forehead against the side of the building.

If she went back down, she'd quickly be overwhelmed and die. If she stayed put, she'd be a sitting duck for any flying demons that wished to knock her off the wall and...she'd also die. If she was stupid enough to jump from a flimsy vine upward toward the roof, she'd most likely fall and...die.

"I guess I already beèn accepting the prospect before," she signed, reminding herself of her resignation when the devil elf had first threatened to kill her.

Faced with the prospect of death no matter what she did, Kenda took her pick. If she had to die, at least let it be while trying to live. Not allowing herself the time to hesitate and have second thoughts, she whispered a little prayer and pushed up with her feet.

Her center tingled as she went airborne, missing the roof by a single handspan. Legitimately afraid for the first time that day, she sighed in a way that would have depressed anybody listening as she reached the height of her jump.

And it was just her luck that the face of someone already so depressed that they couldn't even be affected by the sound popped over the edge of the roof at her.

Throwing half her body over the roof, Neruda reached down and grabbed Kenda by the wrists, confusing the forest troll more than any single moment ever could in ten thousand years. In the biggest 'dafuq' moment of that eon, the night elf wrenched her own back just to pull Kenda onto the roof.


	7. A Temporary Truce

The ranks of literally thousands of troops from both sides raged below, reverberating off of ever tower and spire until it all melded into a single, indiscernible mass of noise in the sky. The screeches of aerial mounts pressed down from below, providing a thoroughly unpleasant flood of sound that seemed to assault the ears from every direction at once. The phenomenon was strange: down in the streets, where the action was happening, the sound was actually _easier_ to tolerate.

None of that compared to the shock of what had just happened, though. Sprawled on the floor of an observation deck sealed up with a brass grating, the forest troll and the night elf panted, but of them mentally and physically exhausted after having been caught in a Legion sweep. In Kenda's case, she was a little more shocked since her imperfect enemy, the person who'd been stalking her and attempting to spill her blood for months, had prevented it from being spilled. The entire situation made no sense.

In spite of her own obvious pain and exhaustion, Neruda scrambled to her feet first. Another rusty red blob swooped toward the open entryway on the covered roof, and it was aiming right for them. Grabbing a brass grating forming the safety hatch on the wall, the demon hunter swiftly slammed it shut and locked it. The terrorfiend that had been diving for them didn't have enough time to stop itself, and it slammed right into the hatch of the observation deck. Like a fly stuck to putty, it remained affixed to the wall of the deck for a few seconds before slowly peeling off like an old sticker and plummeting to its death. The two of them were safe...at least from demons.

Neruda backed up, breathing heavily but comfortably as the two of them had some temporary shelter. "We can - we can wait here. We need a plan and - ack!"

Without warning, the shadow under grabbed Neruda by the horns and hip-tossed the demonic elf into the wall. A few paintings and stylish pieces of decor fell to the floor due to the impact on the surface, and Neruda appeared completely blindsided and defenseless.

"That be for jumping me on the beach!"

Before Neruda could resist, Kenda jumped on her and pinned her arms behind her back hard enough to strain the woman's back.

"That be for jumping me in the woods!"

"Wait! Wait! Wait! I can explain!"

"You start explaining, or I'm gonna start tying your fingers and toes together in a knot!"

"Okay, but I need you to stop twisting my arms because it's forcing me to arch my back and I can't breathe while I talk!"

"Fine."

Kenda released the wrestling hold and allowed Neruda to flop down in a heap on the stone floor. Although she sat down on the floor a few feet away, she did make sure to confiscate her imperfect enemy's weapons just in case the friendly behavior was a ruse.

"I be waiting."

"Come on, just...just...this isn't easy for me!" The dazed demonic elf pushed herself up and slumped into a sitting position, and the way she leaned against the wall implied that she had no intention of instigating another fight. "Just give me a few seconds. This is so hard."

"Explaining why you tried to kill me be hard? What, did the Legion bribe you or something?"

"Never! Impossible!" Neruda replied indignantly. "They took me after you hog tied me in Falonaar, but they couldn't break me!"

Kenda raised one of her hairless eyebrows curiously. The way Neruda opened that topic so easily seemed a little fake, as if she were trying to garner sympathy. It wouldn't work.

"Maybe you shouldn't have been trying to kill strangers. Then we wouldn't have met, I wouldn't have whooped your ass and left you on that beach, and that Felsong lady wouldn't have knocked one of your teeth out."

"She _pulled_ out _three_ of my teeth! I was tortured because you left me defenseless in that beach! I couldn't even stop her cronies when they found me and took me and other demon hunters to her!"

"That still don't explain why you attacked me in the first place. Or why you said - your words, hun - you were gonna take me as a trophy."

"I didn't use that word!"

"Same difference, hun."

"Let me talk! I'm trying to make amends - I thought saving you from falling off the wall would be enough!"

The two of them stared at each other for a few moments as arcane explosions rang out from both sides in the battle. They had limited time, but they also had no support aside from each other until they could find more help. And Kenda was rather intent on figuring out why the nutcase was trying to hard to murder her if they were going to temporarily help each other.

When she kept her mouth shut, Neruda seemed to understand. "I wasn't always like this, you know," she started.

 _Faaaaak, not another woobie tale_ , Kenda thought.

"I was...I wanted to be a champion. I thought I could be. After spending all me life in-"

 _A small village in Ashenvale?_

"-a small village in Ashenvale-"

 _I knew it._

"-I thought I'd be the one to venture outside Kalimdor and make a name for myself. I'm barely even a thousand years old...I thought my future would be so starry and grand..."

Neruda paused, seeming sincerely dejected. They'd only been up there in the observation deck for a few minutes, but the night elf had gotten there first. Kenda had no idea who the demonic elf had managed to do that, and for all she knew, Neruda could have already been sitting up there wallowing in self-pity for a while after the initial felguard attack.

Shaking her head, Neruda exuded the sort of pained look that almost made Kenda feel sorry for her despite their conflict. "I joined those...that group down there. There were guild flyers all over the bigger cities after our people joined the Alliance, and Ada took me as her apprentice. We thought we'd fight...well, the Horde, no offense."

"None taken, I don't much care for the Horde." Neruda shot her a puzzled expression, and Kenda worried they'd lose too much time if they got sidetracked. "Another time, hun. I still be more interested in knowing why you tried to kill me."

"Right...well, Ada took me in as her apprentice, and we were shipped to the Alterac Mountains. I thought I would be a heroine, that I would help the dwarves retake their land...and we did, for a time. But I wasn't experienced with fighting anything other than demons, like at Mount Hyjal. I'd never been tasked with stopping a non-demonic being; even the specific furbolg tribes I'd fought were fel-corrupted. So when we took over a tower during a skirmish, we had these Horde officials who laid down their arms, one of them was an orc. So I killed him...and the gates of Helheim opened for me."

"So you got discharged," Kenda said.

"I didn't stop to think that he might have been surrendering; it was an honest mistake and to be frank, it doesn't haunt me. Casualties happen in war. But it was my first battle, and in full view of Alliance officials...Ada was pressured and had to make an example." Neruda stopped for a moment and bit her lower lip, as if she was trying to suppress a great deal of hurt. "At least...I thought she was pressured. But the way she looked at me now...it was like...hate."

Not wanting to lose time to more crying, Kenda tried to pull Neruda back to the topic. "So you thought that because you got discharged, that gave you the right to be killing me?" she asked pointedly. "All so your guild would take you back?"

"Please, don't make this harder than it already is! I'm trying to be real with you, but I've never told anybody these things, things I'm not proud of, except for Octavion. And he...he's dead too...he died attacking demons so I could climb up here..."

"Loa protect your sabre," Kenda said, forcing herself to use a polite tone despite her impatience with the conversation.

"Thank you...he was all I have. Ada is gone, the others probably are, too...I have no one else in this world."

"And that been the case since Alterac? You been alone?"

"No...shortly after I was booted from the guild, the Burning Crusade began on Outland. I was blacklisted from the Alliance and the Sentinels, so I went through the Dark Portal on my own...and I found the Illidari. They were willing to take anybody because so few people could survive the initiation anyway. I did, mere days before we were caught by that witch, Maiev Shadowsong. I was imprisoned, only to be released be her, and dumped here in the Broken Isles. Just a tool to be exploited."

As depressed as Neruda appeared, Kenda wasn't satisfied. Too much of the story didn't make sense. "So if you already in the Illidari, why you trying to kill Horde members and get back in the Sentinels?" she asked.

Neruda's eyeless face looked back at the shadow hunter, legitimately confused. "I swear, I wasn't going to kill you, even though I said it. Even though I...wait, what did you say?"

"I said, why you trying to get your old position in the Sentinels back if you already an Illidari?"

Pain mixed with confusion on the night elf's face, but also sincere consideration. Kenda shook her head, realizing that, as ancient as Neruda might be, she was still kind of an idiot. Albeit an idiot whom the forest troll kind of pitied.

"Why...why am I trying...but I was a Sentinel! I was supposed to make my guild proud-"

"You don't have a guild anymore, hun. You have a class order hall, which be more than I got - shadow hunters got nothing. You got a whole group of people like you who can share experience and techniques, and you pretty good at what you do. Why you trying to be something you not?"

Pausing and staring at her lap, Neruda appeared to be at a loss for words. For the first time, Kenda actually heard her laugh, as if surprised that she'd never thought of such an obvious solution. Her laugh was dry and unpleasant, but she at least smiled when she did so. She _did_ appear able to smile pleasantly.

"Goddess...I feel like such an idiot."

"I agree." Neruda snapped her head toward Kenda, appearing rather offended, but the tusked woman didn't back down. "I feel bad for your story and all, but none of that gives you the right to be attacking me."

"No, you don't understand!" Neruda blurted out defensively, and Kenda just rolled her eyes as she prepared for a rant. "I _wasn't_ going to kill you because you're right...I can't. I can kill demons and aberrations, but I can't kill other mortals...I just can't bring myself to do it again. You think you're the first attempt? You weren't even the first Horde member I attacked in Falonaar that week. I'd chucked a goblin into a Legion portal, but I didn't have the guts to activate it and cause demons to teleport in his physical space. I congratulated myself on gaining honor afterwards, but I was lying to myself.

"There were others. I tied a tauren shaman to the back of Octavion and dragged her for a mile, I cut up a few orc grunts in Stormheim badly-"

"Even if you weren't gonna kill me, you said you would," Kenda replied, finally getting to the main point of her own. "Do you understand, after Felsong got to you, what that feels, like? Do you understand that you put me through what she put you through?"

Neruda gasped, and unlike many of her reactions, this one obviously wasn't faked. True horror and shock marked her face, and she visibly cringed at the comparison. "No! Don't say that! I don't want to hear that!"

"When I beat you up, I made it clear that I was gonna let you live. When you beat me up, you threatened to kill me. What be the difference between you and Felsong!"

"Stop, you're triggering me!"

"Get triggered then, you need to be hearing this and I deserve to be saying it. You got tortured physically, and so you passed that on to me psychologically. Why should I be excusing you if your solution to being a victim was to make another victim?"

"But I knew I couldn't kill you like I couldn't kill the other people I defeated - I just...I felt like I couldn't be whole until I made you give in because you defeated me too easily. I wasn't going to torture you, I just wanted to rough you up a little!"

"You not be helping your case any."

"And _you_ never attacked a member of the Alliance?"

This time, it was Kenda's turn to fall silent. So far, she'd been in control of the conversation and had only been pumping Neruda for information. What she absolutely hadn't expected was an actual, strong retort. The truth was that Kenda most certainly had attacked members of the Alliance before without provocation, and had killed many of them at battlegrounds, as had most other adventurers; few of their kind were innocent.

She had to hand it to the psycho elf; she hadn't known that Neruda had the ability to coherently argue a point.

"That's what I thought. All of us out here adventuring, we're guilty to an extent. Nobody is innocent. I beat you up and rolled you into a rug today because you beat me up last time and tied me to a tree. And I attacked you that time because you'd beaten me up and hog tied me on that beach the time before that, which caused Felsong to catch me and to...do things to me. And it's always based on these chains of people doing wrong things to each other.

"But I was **never** going to kill you and deep down inside, I knew that. I honestly believed that if I did, Ada would have readmitted me, which was incorrect...but regardless of that error, I still also knew I could never do it. I just...was faking it. I was faking everything while chasing after something I knew I couldn't do, and lying to myself. And if I don't lie to myself, then I just...I can't even look at myself in the mirror anymore unless I lie."

Neruda started to curl up into a ball. She was obviously a defeated woman, though Kenda wasn't quite done with her. Not if she had to trust her for the duration of the battle for the Terrace of Order.

"And the first time you attacked me?"

So far, most of Neruda's behavior had been rather manic and almost child-like. For a person who was 1,000 years old, she had been surprisingly immature. When faced down with Kenda and the forest troll's lack of reinforcement of her behavior, however, a noticeable shift occurred. Rather than curling into a ball, Neruda opened up her posture a bit and made eye contact. Or at least, focused her empty eye sockets onto Kenda.

"I'm sorry. I don't have an excuse for that time, I was just griefing." She held up the smallest finger on her weird, five-digited hands. "Pinky swear that I'm sorry and it's over?"

"Dafuq?" Kenda replied, not fully realizing at first that the thousand-year-old was being serious. "You attacked me like some griefer in Falonaar, deliver the beatdown of the century all over that house earlier today, but it all be okay because you wanna pinky swear?"

For a split second, Neruda's long, purple eyebrows shot up as if she hadn't previously realized how trite her offer sounded. She quickly forced those brows back down, though, and tried to play it cool.

"Yes," she replied with a poker face that could have won her a few rounds at even the seediest Steamwheedle gambling den. She even waggled her pinky finger like some big, tattooed kid with horns.

More arcane explosions made Kenda's decision for her. "Fine," she said while wrapping one of her thick, normal looking fingers around the weird little appendage that elves called a 'pinky.' "Now come on, we gotta get to the front lines. At least there we can be having some protection."

"Together, we're unstoppable!" Neruda cheered in her chain smoker's voice while opening a hatch in the floor that led from the observation deck down to the lower floor.

"Oh loa," Kenda signed as the two of them walked down the stairs.

At the fourth floor, the building they were in opened into a sort of indoor market opening up to a bridge leading to the next building. From there, they could see a series of aerial walkways leading over the city below and leading back toward the Grand Promanade.

"Okay...if we follow this, then I think we gonna be heading back toward the battle LOA WHAT BEHIND US!"

"Haaa!" Neruda shouted, losing all of the prowess and dexterity she'd displayed during their duel in the streets as they both jumped at a noise behind them.

"Whoa, whoa, wait, it's me!"

Both of them swung around, their weapons raised, to find a shockingly familiar face. Amber eyes reminded Kenda of a nighttime tryst many weeks prior, and she almost forgot about the battle when she realized that the person who'd snuck up behind them was an old flame that, on some level, still shined.

"Rynd!" Kenda and Neruda both exclaimed at the same time...just before they started staring at each other in surprise.

The druid gazed back at them shyly. "So...I had no idea that you two know each other," he chuckled nervously.


	8. Ragtag Reunification

The three of them stood in an obtuse triangle as they tried to get their bearings back after the bizarre reunion. The battle was still raging below, and they had precious little time to waste. Unfortunately, the circumstance had temporarily derailed their progress.

Running a hand through his almost hypnotically vibrant hair, Rynd looked rather embarrassed. "Well...what a coincidence to meet you both here," he chuckled to himself.

"Well, I guess we all met in Dalaran cause of the war," Kenda replied. "It not be that big of a coincidence."

Neruda, on the other hand, appeared flustered and a bit upset. "Wait a minute...how do you two know each other?" she asked in an accusatory tone. Kenda began to suspect that there was a little more drama than she'd realized.

"Yeah, well, about that...I guess we're all adults, and...sometimes, adults make...decisions," Rynd mumbled.

He was a terrible actor, and Kenda saw right through his attempts to stall. Personally, she wasn't that worried about what connection, if any, he and Neruda might had. Kenda's time with him had been only for one night and they both understood that well. Laying out every sort of feeling between them wouldn't help anybody, and the betrayed expression on Neruda's face signaled that the topic was best avoided.

" **I** know a decision we all need to be making, and it be how we gonna get outta here alive."

The berobed druid immediately understood Kenda's point. "Yes, I concur fully! I was separated from my unit, I'm guessing you two were separated, so let's go join the battle so we're no longer easy targets!"

The skeptical expression on Neruda's face didn't elicit any sympathy at all from the forest troll, unlike the way her contorted looks had during the sob story. In fact, she might have let out a little laugh were it not for the fact that there were mobs of demons everywhere.

"Fine," Neruda huffed while partially turning her back to Rynd. "I guess we have more important things to focus on for now."

Grateful to no longer be under the heat of the horned elf's scrutiny, the druidic elf stepped beyond them and pointed to the bridge linking the buildings at the fourth floor. "I was separated from my group during the initial push on the Terrace, to the east," he started to explain. "I escaped up in the spires and saw everyone regrouping, though. The Legion is trying to make a last stand at the Sanctum of Order because half of the Duskwatch defected."

"Wow, seriously?" Neruda asked, less irritated than before.

"Seriously!" he replied, though his warm smile went unreturned. "It's the end for Legion foothold here; the battle looked fierce, but I know we can win this. And Rakash is there, too; I saw his unit from afar, but they were surrounded and outnumbered last I saw."

At the mention of her brother, Kenda began to worry. One of the worst parts of having a sibling who was also a Horde soldier was the stress of worrying about him all the time instead of focusing on the mission. In a rather stunning show of sympathy, Neruda actually seemed to notice the conflict in Kenda's eyes.

"If we've lost our units, then let's make our own with each other," Neruda said as she laid a hand on Kenda's shoulder. "I know I've already left too many people behind today."

Almost too conflicted to talk at first, Kenda could only nod. If her two comrades had wanted to simply go directly to the front line of the battle, she wouldn't have had a logical reason not to stick by them. But if she were to later receive news that her brother had fallen, she'd never forgive herself. Neruda made her choice much easier.

"Thanks," she murmured to the two elves, feeling unusually sheepish.

"It isn't solely a sentimental decision," Rynd explained as he led them out to the sky bridge linking the building to the next one. The fight was still thick below them, and they began running so that nobody at ground level would notice and climb up after them. "I heard other units shouting orders before my own fell; First Arcanist Andaris Narassin is preventing reinforcements from being teleported to the Sanctum by the nightborne. She needs to be put down, and if we want to form a proper strike team, we need someone to...well, to take all the damage so we don't have to."

"That sound like my stubborn mule of a brother," Kenda replied, chuckling to try to cheer herself up and stop worrying. "He be what we need."

"So wait, if Andaris is holding back Telemancer Oculeth's portals, then what the fel are the rest of the units and companies doing?" Neruda asked as they reached the next building. It's interior market stalls were the same as that of the last building, and they continued skipping a good portion of the city and the scuffles below as they tried to reach the Terrace of Order.

Rynd continued running, but raised his voice so they could hear him. "From what I could see, they were busy shutting down Legion portals and clearing out the area on and around the Terrace itself. The Depths of the Sanctum, where Andaris is holding up the shield, is cramped; a whole company of troops probably wouldn't be able to fit inside. She has a much easier job defending than anyone would have attacking-"

They all paused as a large part of central Suramar which had just come into their view was destroyed in an explosion of tiles, bricks and dust. Columns, the face of two buildings and a few staircases crumbled as a sizeable Forsaken force smashed directly through the city itself and attacked the single largest mass of Legion centurions. The three of them continued running across the aerial bridges and watching as the Alliance and Horde troops gained a much needed addition of undead skeleton soldiers closing in on the demons in a pincer attack.

"We still have time to find him; time is of the essence, but it's also on our side," Rynd said as they passed through the fourth floor of another building and onto the last bridge leading to the highest area of the city prior to the Grand Promenade. "We're very close to where I last saw them...uh oh..."

"What? Why uh oh?!" the forest troll asked.

Kenda pushed out ahead of the two elves as they reached the end of the aerial walkway that led them on to the very beginning of the Terrace of Order, far away from where she'd been prior to retreating but in view of that same location. Everywhere they looked, there were dead bodies, even of demons. Since the level of fel corruption in Suramar had skyrocketed, the demons were ironically able to be permanently killed - intense concentrations of fel energy caused them to truly die much like being killed in the Twisting Nether would. Every imaginable caste of demon and every imaginable species from Azeroth and Outland littered the Terrace, preventing the three of them from running as they tried not to trip over all the bloody, mutilated corpses.

If Kenda hadn't begun to panic when she saw the sheer amount of corpses, she certainly did when she saw a circle of literally a few dozen wrathguards in the center of the Terrace. Their bodies were flying this way and that, being knocked up into the air despite their considerable size and skidding hard on the ground. They didn't let up, however, and continued trying to gang up on something in the middle of them.

She came to a stop just beyond the circle, both due to the fact that they'd need a plan and, well, there were too many corpses all over the ground. Her two companions caught up with her, coming to a halt just as she started to cast her curses on the remaining wrathguards.

Rynd waved his staff in the air, apparently casting some sort of a debuff of his own as more demons were knocked back. "They were in this area, but we don't technically know for sure if Rakash is thenone they're attacking-"

"Arrggh!" several of the wrathguards cried in their weird, echoing voices as the majority of the survivors were all knocked back at once.

"Incoming!" Neruda yelled as she pulled Kenda and Rynd to the ground with her.

A wrathguard flew directly over them, narrowly missing what would have been a painful collision as the demon hit the ground just behind them so hard that its shoulder cracked and its arm literally flew off of its body. Fel blood was strewn everywhere, and the arm continued to twitch for a moment even when the demon it had been attached to laid still. Most of the demons died on impact, and the few who remained were falling fast.

"That be him for sure!" Kenda said as she leapt to her feet, pulling out her blades and slicing up those demons that hadn't died immediately on impact.

Neruda jumped up after her, cutting apart stray surviving demons as well. "Wait, are you sure?"

The last wrathguard stood with its back to them, swinging a sword covered in troll's blood. Just as the three strange bedfellows approached it, a gigantic forest green arm almost as thick as the demon's waist punched all the way through its chest, reaching out clear on the other side of its body with a fist weapon. The wrathguard's heart flew backward from the force, colliding with Neruda's face.

Despite the demon hunter's impressive physical toughness, being slapped in the face by a flying demon heart was too disgusting to bear, and she stumbled. "Ack! Oh, no, no! Some of it got in my mouth!" she hacked, and then started to dry heave.

Kenda hadn't realized how upset she'd become until the tension in her chest finally released, leading her to gasp out loud in relief. Her brother tore the wrathguard in half, finally revealing himself behind it. The berserker was covered in a lot of cuts and gashes as well as a ton of demon blood, but considering the fact that he fought harder the more he was hurt, the sight itself wasn't worrying.

Leaping over the corpses, Kenda threw her arms around his neck despite the fact that he didn't like being hugged. "I thought you in trouble! Why you be on your own, you dumbass?" she laughed, happy to simply see him alive.

"Get off me! I not needing any help!" Rakash replied as he squirmed out of her grip. "What you do here? I thought you put with pink elves?"

"Yeah, but they died. Now I be with these two...you remember them from your anger management counseling, right?"

"Peace be with you," Rynd said while bowing to Rakash in greeting.

The berserker scrunched down his heavy, hairless brow at the druid. "No," he replied flatly. Bothered by her brother's asinine behavior, Kenda elbowed him in the ribs to remind him of the point of counseling in the first place. "But I be happy you not dead."

"It seems you've made a great deal of progress," the druid replied, unfortunately not joking.

Once Neruda had finished coughing up spittle, she joined the others. "Greetings, Rakash. I don't like you, but your sister and I have an understanding, so let's do this-"

"Too much talk," Rakash replied as he turned away from all of them and began running down the Grand Promenade.

"Aaarrr!" Neruda shrieked, irritated again at being interrupted. Kenda hid her grin, snickering at both of them as they all started to follow.

Rynd caught up with Kenda as they approached the highest part of the Terrace. "There don't seem to be any other units fighting up here - everyone is preoccupied with the bulk of the Legion forces and - well, look at that!"

Up ahead of them, more of the wretched nightfallen were crawling out of the sewers. The teleportation device used by the rebels had been shut down, but that didn't seem to bother all the fel-resistant wretched, who had no qualms about crawling through septic tanks, storm drains, and all sorts of other disgusting places in order to reach their target.

"I remember those - they can eat the First Arcanist's shield!" Neruda said as they all neared the entrance to the Sanctum Depths.

Steeling herself for the unknown since they had no idea what Andaris' fortifications would be like, Kenda took one last deep breath. "Who would've thought we'd be doing this on the same side?" she chuckled to her not-so-psycho-but-socially-challenged ally.

Neruda grinned, flashing her fangs and at least one visibly fake tooth in the front. A very low laugh escaped her mouth, and for the first time, it didn't sound dry and unpleasant so much as sadly cynical. "If we die, I'll feel proud to tell Elune that I died next to my perfect enemy," she replied as they joined the swarm of wretched intent on bringing down the Nighthold's power barrier.


	9. Storming the Sanctum

Wretched swarmed all around the four of them, scampering along like a tsunami of vermin. Only these vermin were on their side.

The Sanctum of Order laid straight ahead, its elven architecture slightly blemished by cannon fire and lots of fel blood. More wretched crawled out of the gutters and storm drains, teeming around the Sanctum from the direction of both the Terrace of Order and the Grand Promenade. The high entryway had been barricaded, and a group of overwhelmed-looking Duskwatch defenders tried their best to keep the nightfallen junkies at bay with their halbreds.

Ever the moralist, Rynd ran forward and tried to grab Rakash to slow him down, though it was about as effective as trying to pull on a kodo's tail. "Wait, wait! Before we go in swinging, I think there's a better way to do this!"

When her brother growled at her former main squeeze, Kenda jumped in the middle of the two men. She'd already spent too much time fighting against Neruda until they were able to call a truce, and she didn't need any more of her companions in conflict with one another.

"Rakash, count to three!" she ordered her younger (though not little) brother as she also tried to hold him back.

"No," the lunk replied. Although he didn't actually count as the anger management counselor had instructed him to do, he did stop long enough to answer, which still achieved the goal of getting all four of them to stop.

With the wretched agitating for a fight against the cornered nightborne guards, Rynd tried to explain himself. "Half the Duskwatch already defected - Elisande is a dictator and they have no true loyalty to her. If they think she'll fall, they'll switch sides easily."

Neruda appeared as unconvinced as Rakash. "You want us to hold back the wretched in the hopes that these guards will join us. But how can we be sure that they won't stab us in the back? We'd be better off just killing them now." She actually began to wade through the seamof wretched around them before Kenda grabbed her.

Pulling a somewhat sneaky trump card, Kenda stood in front of the two more recalcitrant members of their group. "Neruda...these not be demons. Maybe they made a choice to defect a dictator, but they can also make a choice not to...don't they deserve a chance to go straight?"

The low blow hit its target hard, and Neruda crooked her head back indignantly. The caveat was that the demon hunter couldn't argue her point without exposing her pain from mistakes past to Rynd, with whom she obviously had an even more complicated history than Kenda did.

"Fine," she replied just as indignantly. "I vote to negotiate."

Kenda slapped her on the back in an attempt to apologize for playing that card. "Thanks. And I be sorry for playing it like that, but we don't got time," the shadow hunter whispered, receiving a semi-accepting, slightly embarrassed nod for her apology.

Without giving her brother time to protest again, Kenda roughly shoved droves of wretched aside like unruly juvenile raptors. She already had experience training them with the Nightfallen Rebels, and they backed away without complaint even when she pushed them hard, sort of like ornery dogs responding to their master. At the front of the sea of snarling junkies, four members of the Duskwatch with two sabres backed up even further at the sight of the big forest troll looming over them.

Their leader, a woman wearing armor far too stylish to truly be combat-effective, knelt down to thrust with her halberd, but appeared too cowed by all the wretched to actually strike. "Hark hark! An Amani tribeswoman draws near!" the nightborne guard replied in a hilariously anachronistic manner, pronouncing the words in Common with a heavy accent.

"Amani?" Kenda replied in amusement. "I think you dated yourself...well, forget this. Listen to me now: do you want to be living or dying?"

The apparent captain backed up a little, and her subordinates actually hit the wall as they found themselves cornered. Despite their obvious defeat, the captain's eyes shined defiantly when pressed. "Forsooth, we shall die if it's for our city!" she replied, finding a measure of steel in her voice.

Kenda smirked. "Will you fight to be saving your city?"

The eyes of a dead woman walking looked back at her, and Kenda noticed the same resignation she'd felt earlier when Neruda had threatened to kill her. "Verily our hearts are for Suramar!" the overwhelmed captain said. As intimidated as she was, the silver-haired woman appeared ready to die.

Sweeping a few of the wretched aside, Kenda offered her hand to the captain in a melodramatic gesture she was sure the intensely anachronistic, uptightly formal elf would understand. "Join us," she said. "Elisande be making the same pact with demons that Azshara did; her heart beats for herself, not for your city."

"Our lives for the Magistrix!" one of the subordinate guards weakly retorted, though he was quickly shushed by the captain.

Surrounded by a mob of angry mana addicts and group of armed adventurers, the Duskwatch guards must have been scared out of their minds. Whether it was fear of a logical patriotism, the captain begrudgingly knelt and laid down her halberd, temporarily causing the wretched to calm down.

"Whosoever sits on the throne...our loyalty is to the city, not to a personality," the captain replied, and two of her subordinates knelt down with her.

The man who'd spoken up in favor of Elisande, however, appeared unable to accept the decision. "Nobody defies the Grand Magistrix ACK!"

So fast that it almost couldn't be seen, a war glaive flew in an arc like a boomerang and swiftly decapitated the man. His severed head had already rolled on the ground by the time Neruda caught her weapon.

Maintaining her pose as she caught the weapon in midair, Neruda actually didn't look fake for once. "Anyone else support Elisande?" she rhetorically asked. Nobody answered, though Rakash seemed to find the act to be hilarious.

For a brief moment, the captain appeared dismayed at the summary execution of one of her men. The sentiment, however, quickly passed, and she gazed at the wrecked, dilapidated skyline of her city under siege as if to remind herself of the stakes.

"We support Suramar...and we know why you're here," she said as she rose from her knee. "First Arcanist Andaris is inside, and she is the key to the power barrier. We can help you enter and perhaps convince a few more of our comrades inside, but I do believe these...er... _things_ will need to remove her own personal power barrier."

The mass of wretched didn't seem to comprehend the captain of the guard showed for them, but they were certainly becoming agitated as the lack of action. Kenda had tried to train them previously, but she hadn't been involved with moving them into Suramar, and she had no idea who was supposed to be commanding them. For all she knew, there could have been another party assigned to take out Andaris; judging by the sheer volume of corpses on the Terrace of Order, it wouldn't be a stretch to guess that she and her group were the sole survivors of the initial assault there.

"We need to be getting these things into the Sanctum," she whispered to Neruda, "otherwise I be worried they'll go rogue."

Neruda looked to the captain. "It's time. We need to go in now."

Weary of the gnashing, vaguely elven creatures swarmed around them, the captain waved for her two remaining troops and their sabres to follow. "There's an invisible door that leads directly to the Depths just around the curve of the structure here. But, if you don't mind, please keep these...irregular troops away from us."

"Just stay near and you gonna be fine," Kenda replied, though she really had no way to guarantee that. As the captain started to creep around the building, Kenda tried in vain to communicate with the wretched. "And the rest of you...try to be quiet!" she ordered. A number of quasi-sentient stares greeted her back, and she could only hope that the inner circle of the First Arcanist's guards would be small enough to contain and keep away from the ravenous yet fragile creatures.

The captain led the group to a blank expanse of the circular Sanctum, dragging her fingers across the stone in an odd formation. No runes or other visible cues of a pattern lit up, though a very faint ringing sound was heard, and the stone merely disappeared into nothing rather than faded away. A chamber with a staircase leading down opened up to them, and the dimensions posed a bit of a problem.

The captain stepped inside before turning back to them. "I'll go first; the First Arcanist's champion, Dalion, just might listen to reason; if he does, so will the other guards." She glanced at the wretched one more time. "I strongly suggest that one of you walks behind those things to ensure that they're all where you can see them."

Everyone looked at Rynd, who didn't appear surprised. "I don't know why it should be me, but I'll do it if you all think it's a good idea."

"You be the oldest," replied Kenda.

"You're the most balanced," replied Neruda.

"I don't wanna do it," replied Rakash.

"I get it, I get it," Rynd sighed. "You all go in, I'll make sure that all the wretched follow and don't stray."

The whole group squeezed inside, following the captain of the Duskwatch unit. The Depths of the Sanctum weren't particularly far down, and they could already hear the sound of conversations in the central atrium by the time they reached a narrow hallway behind the main wall. Just before the exit of what appeared to be an access hallway they'd used, the captain stopped them.

"Andaris is in the middle of the atrium, which is surrounded by three partitions. The First Arcanist won't see you from here, but Damion will. Let me try to persuade him to join us as you did with us. He is a good man, but is merely misguided."

"Try your best," Neruda said.

"I will. When we're ready to ambush Andaris, I'll return to you myself. She's a fanatic, and there won't be any reasoning with her."

The three group members just inside the hallway nodded and watched as the captain led her remaining troops into the Sanctum. The partition across from them as well as the floors were of a dark-bluish grey color - drab and lifeless compared to the rest of Suramar. There was nothing else for them to look at, and little else to do but listen and wait. They didn't have to wait long because the sound of foot and paw steps stopped shortly thereafter.

Whispers bounced back and forth, but the walls of the Sanctum Depths didn't appear to provide decent acoustics. Kenda and Neruda both tried putting their ears to the wall, but that only muffled the sounds even more. They didn't dare approach the entrance to the atrium, as there could always be a patrol of non-sympathetic guards passing by just at the worst possible moment. Even when Kenda knelt down and put her hand to the ear, she could only make out certain words and phrases.

Neruda tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned around to find her temporary ally mouthing words to her. _There are more people joining their conversation_ , the demon hunter silently said. _I think the captain might get most of their guards_.

 _Let's be hoping so_ , the shadow hunter replied.

A number of brief, slow sentences reached their ears, though this time the words were to quiet to hear. By the softness of the tone, it seemed as though the supposed champion of the First Arcanist and her guards had been convinced.

The sound of a death groan, two muffled cries for help and two whimpers of big cats being put down changed that entire perception.

"Search the halls for more traitors!" the harsh though similarly quiet sound of another voice said.

Kenda froze, and though she wasn't looking at Neruda anymore, she could feel a similar tension emanating from the horned elf. "Oh shit," she murmured.

Amazingly, the wretched had been silent until that time, either due to good training or Rynd's ability to calm them down. Unfortunately, Kenda had forgotten about her ornery brother who'd barely been able to squeeze himself into the narrow hallway, and both she and Neruda were suddenly knocked several feet forward and straight out of their hiding place as his patience ended. It was all they could do to properly brace themselves before landing on the stone floor; stopping him before any of the guards noticed them simply wasn't an option.

"Duskwatch! We're under a second Amani invasion!" called out the same man, ostensibly Dalion.

Kenda glanced up in time just to see their surroundings (which were different from how the captain had described them), the former captain's corpse alongside those of her fellow turncoats, and about a dozen guards forming a line of defense against her brother.

"You moron, now the whole building be knowing!" she called after him, though he'd already plowed into Dalion and the first dozen or so guards, knocking back any of those that didn't simply die on impact.

In what had to be the first intelligent thing he'd said all week, he looked back over his shoulder as he grabbed Dalion by the ankles and used the supposed champion as a two-handed mace to beat the other nightborne with. "All the aggro on me, go get what's her name!" he replied just before he clobbered the first of several adds with his new Magnificent Mace of Dalion's Body.

As if their plan couldn't go any further awry, Rynd seemed to finally lose controls of the wretched, and they began dashing out of the hiding place one by one. "No, wait! It's not time yet!" he ordered as he leapt straight over their heads and landed a few feet in front of them. He pulled his staff out and used it as a barrier to hold them back, but so many of them had tried to follow Rakash that they were already causing quite a commotion.

The noise didn't go unnoticed in the main atrium behind a second wall. "What's the meaning of this?! Duskwatch, to arms!" shouted someone with a **very** loud voice. It didn't take a genius to guess who it was.

Already to her feet, Neruda seemed to have a different idea. "Rynd, wait...let them go! It's time, we can cover them while they bring down her barrier!"

Everything was happening so fast, but fortunately Kenda managed to follow Neruda's thought pattern. "You mean your big demon form?" she asked as she joined Neruda's side.

The demonic elf grinned wide, finally able to show off her powers and truly be appreciated for them. "Finally, it's time to wreak havoc as a team!" she replied with gusto, her fangs flashing.

Rynd looked at the two women for a moment, over to Rakash, and then the large amount of fel green energy brightening from around the corner. He released the wretched from the way he'd been pressing his staff against them to hold them back, stepping out of their way. "Okay...go! It's time!" he said, though his words of encouragement were drowned out as the almost trogg-like elf kin swarmed past him.

The demon hunter and shadow hunter both ran alongside the swarm, trying to beat them to the First Arcanist before she cut them down. When they rounded the corner, they saw the huge open area that was the inner part of the Sanctum Depths, but they weren't able to focus on the splendor of the architecture or the details of the environment. Standing in the middle and occupying the entire room with her presence was a furious nightborne elf who looked even more demonic than Neruda. The woman's red and black armor glowed with green fel corruption that even seemed to tint her hair and nails, and all around her, what appeared to be semi-visible ley lines of energy flowed into her.

The wretched all stopped running before the wide, open area in the middle of the atrium, growling and pointing at the corrupted creature who could be no other than Andaris Narassin, but none of them dared to come too close to her. A wall of wretched formed opposite the faint wall of foul magic pulled around the First Arcanist, engaging in a brief standoff as Andaris paused and raised a long, bizarrely green-tinged silver eyebrow at them.

"You've changed..." she said to the wretched with a contemptuous look on her face. That look very quickly changed to shock in the most satisfying way possible when the individual barrier that had been surrounding her faded away in tandem with fluorescent waves of light shining on the wrinkly skin of the fel-resistant wretched. " **What**?!"

Fiery embers flaked off of Neruda's skin as she lunged at Andaris, her war glaives at the ready. A shivarra-like battle cry rang out, and Neruda brought her weapons down just a hair's length away from Andaris' torso. At the very last second, a fel-corrupted scythe swung up and parried the blow, though Andaris certainly seemed quite shocked that her personalized barrier had been nullified by the wretched.

"Taste the wrath of the Illidari!" Neruda hissed in a warped voice as she pressed the attack.

Within a few seconds, she was beaten back despite her increased strength and speed. Andaris was no cloth-wearing bookworm, and the blunt end of her scythe quickly found its way to the side of Neruda's head. The metamorphosized demon-elf reeled, not having expected the felborne fanatic to strike so decisively.

Andaris raised her scythe for an early deathblow. "Whatever you are, your pact with demons is inferior to ours! Hhhhhhhyyyyeeeaaahhh!"

The felborne's threat was ended with a harsh, horrendous scream as Kenda unleashed the worst curse she had, having spent longer than usual charging up her spellcast. Even the sounds of Rynd joining Rakash in the background as well as the gnashing screeches of the wretched were all drowned out by the unusual volume of Andaris' voice. A particularly nasty voodoo curse attacking her brain stem tore through her pain receptors as Kenda tried to overtly influence the willpower of an extremely ancient, self-possessed being. The shadow hunter was quite lucky that her voodoo magic formed a one way link, as Andaris' ego was so massive that her willpower was akin to an arcanite-thorium alloy.

"Hhrrr! Hrrrr! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaa no!" she screamed again while swinging her scythe blindly around her, forcing Neruda to back up. Andaris did **not** take kindly to someone else trying to forcibly control her.

Kenda began to cast the same spell all over again in an effort to double down on the erosion of Andaris' free will. Although she was able to weakly irritate the First Arcanist's motor strip, she wasn't quite able to play the felborne like a puppet. A massive benefit from the mere fact that they battled each other, however, was that the more Andaris tried to fight the mind control, the more the physical pain receptors in her nervous system all fired at once. The corrupted former nightborne could still see, however, and she started to charge at the forest troll, albeit in a jerky, almost wounded fashion due to the pain of the curse.

Unable to focus on both her voodoo and defending herself at the same time, Kenda broke the curse, losing a sizeable chunk of her mana in the process. The aftereffects of her curse lingered, and when Andaris swung the scythe, the strike was slight less precise than it might have been otherwise. Kenda brought her fel blades low in an attempt to block the shorter woman's blow, though even under the aftereffects, Andaris struck so definitively that Kenda's parry was parried, and her shoulders twisted to the side when she refused to let go of her blades.

The split second in which Kenda flinched was enough for the felborne to start casting what would assuredly be an awful spell in retaliation. For the first time, however, the forest troll was actually pleased to see the acrimonious smoldering of Neruda's consume magic ability.

" **Ingrate**!" Andaris growled when she realized that she'd been school locked from casting, and she swung around blindly again as she tried to prevent Neruda from advancing.

As Kenda had noticed, however, Neruda was much more clever than she'd been previously. Without announcing her move, the demon-form elf leapt into the air and came down horizontally on Andaris, stabbing into the felborne's pauldrons and tearing them off entirely. With her shoulders and neck uncovered, Andaris smartly retreated, and brought up her personal barrier again. When the wretched immediately drained it away again, she screamed so loudly that it hurt everyone's ears.

"WHERE IS MY BACKUP?" she practically howled into the halls.

"They're a little bit busy...dying!" Rynd said in what had to be the closest Kenda had ever come to laughing in the middle of a battle. It was the only time she'd ever here the conservative druid make a joke.

The brief moment that Andaris had paused to listen to the answer was enough for cast her curse again. It was a quick cast this time, but considering that Andaris' will was already weakened, it seemed to continue at the same devastating point where she'd left off. The First Arcanist doubled over before preparing to charge Kenda again, forgetting that there was still a transformed demon hunter next to her.

Capitalizing on Andaris' lack of mental clarity, Neruda began to blade dance, dashing back and forth so quickly that she almost disappeared in a blur of dark purple and glowing green. The green trails left behind by Andaris as she was thrashed back and forth almost obscured them from vision until all of the violent movement was stopped in a single shocking moment.

"Hhnnnh!"

In one sweeping movement that almost seemed like a lucky shot, Andaris managed to ignore the curse invading her psyche and brought up an arcing swing from below. The tip of her blade entered Neruda's abdomen just below the navel, causing the demon hunter's breath to catch in her throat. Neruda's mouth opened as she dropped both of her weapons, but no sound came out. In spite of her increased toughness in demon form, the scythe had stabbed her in just the right spot, and she transformed back into elven form after a short delay.

Gritting her teeth evilly, Andaris sneered and looked up at the night elf. "This is the...en...en...is the...en..." she stuttered, trying hard to force the words out of her mouth.

The two elves sat locked in the moment of death for one of them. Neruda tried to push the shaft of the scythe away, but the stab wound had taken the wind out of her, and her hands shook as she struggled for control. She wasn't, however, the only one struggling for control.

At war with her own body, Andaris angrily tried to spit out a coherent sentence. "This is the...en...this is the...en...en...end...the end...of..." Her lips began to quiver in what looked like a combination of pure, unbridled rage and a nervous tick, and her face contorted into an extremely unflattering visage. "This is...the...the en...the end...this is the...end...of... **me**."

Ever so slowly, Andaris pulled her scythe out of the wound, leaving Neruda to back away clutching her abdomen to prevent blood loss. Every muscle visible in the First Arcanist's shoulders and neck flexed as if she were a power lifter, and a bead of sweat dropped over a vein bulging in her temple. Standing and shaking, her head remain fixated on Neruda, though her eyes shifted to watch Kenda just as the shadow hunter released her curse of eroding free will.

In half a second, Kenda brought one of her fel blades down in a hammer blow, slicing it flush across Andaris' wrist. The First Arcanist screamed so loudly that her voice thankfully gave out, resulting in a hoarse rasping as her hand was amputated. Blood spurted from the stump as she fell backward, turning around in a circle a few times as if she'd been slapped across the face with a wet trout. Kenda began to sweat as well, feeling the burn as her mana was almost totally depleted from the voodoo hypnosis.

Still clutching her scythe with a single hand, Andaris tried to retreat, though the gross blood loss and residual effects of the curse caused her to waver as she backed up. Kenda said nothing as she rushed to Neruda's side, though a new sound filled the atrium.

"Herrraaarrr!" hissed one of the wretched as it started to approach the First Arcanist.

Woozy and unfocused, Andaris raised her scythe in a threatening manner to hold the nightfallen junkie at bay. "Stay back!" she said, her anger still blinding her to the imminent danger even to the bitter end.

"Herrraaar!" hissed another wretched as it tried to sneak up behind her.

Spinning around, she tried to shoo the second one away. "What the...don't you know who I am?!" she asked without any decrease in her ego despite the fact that she was bleeding to death from a severed hand.

"Herrraarr!" "Herrraaarrr!" "Heeeerrrrrr!" More hissing filled the air as the wretched, who'd previously been considered fragile support units to be protected, suddenly weren't afraid of the First Arcanist anymore. She tried to bring up her personal barrier again, but it was quickly drained for a third time.

A circle of wretched blocked her from view; despite their hunched nature, Andaris had become so dizzy that she fell to one knee, waving her scythe around in a futile attempt to scare away the nightfallen. "I'm warning you!" were her last words as the crowd of frenzied wretched rushed her like a pack of ravenous ghouls.

As Andaris met a slow and painful death, Kenda put her arm around Neruda's shoulder as her temporary ally started to fall to the ground. "I got this, I got...you gonna be okay," Kenda whispered, trying to calm the horned elf down and assess the damage at the same time.

"I feel cold," Neruda said, displaying the same resignation in her eyes that Kenda had felt earlier that day, when Neruda had ironically been the one threatening to kill her.

Kenda herself had been stabbed in the stomach in battle before, but Kenda could also regenerate; Neruda couldn't, and if she wasn't healed in less than half a minute, she'd likely go into system shock. Before either of them had realized it, Rynd had walked up to them.

"I can cleanse the would; I'm sure that Andaris had poisoned her blade," the druid said as he knelt down next to them. "But you'll have to do the healing." When both women looked up at him and then tried to look past them, his insight was, again, fast and perceptive. "There are no more guards. Your brother is alive, but is...um...busy with the deceased."

Understanding the euphemism for cannibalism, Kenda reminded herself to yell at him for eating people in front of other people later. For now, they had a more serious problem at hand.

"Okay...you might need to be going first...if I seal her wound, the poison could fester."

Nodding slowly, Rynd scooted up next to Neruda and cupped the back of her head in his hand. "You will live today; I promise you that," he told her with a little more emotion laced in his voice than usual. Kenda couldn't deny the short tinge of jealousy that she felt, though she was technically the one who had broken off her fling with Rynd and not the other way around. Plus, she wasn't the one who'd been stabbed in the intestines with a poisoned scythe; she knew she had no room to complain.

Neruda nodded back as he placed his other hand over the wound, conjuring the glow of nature magic. Forest green swirls and tendrils wove out of his hand and into the wound, causing her veins around the cut to glow the same green color for a few moments. He furrowed his brow in frustration as he channeled.

"It's potent, but it will be gone in time...she will need to rest, but the poison will fade. I'm absolutely certain." He turned to Kenda in earnest. "I can only cure, not heal. You'll need to act swiftly."

"I be on it," she replied as she put her hand where his had been.

She could sense the folds of Neruda's skin and the muscle and intestines beneath, almost like sliced lunchmeat due to how fine the cut had been. Starting from the deepest part of the wound, she filled it with her healing wave, using the voodoo as a sort of magical connective tissue as she pulled the wound closed. Her work was slow and methodical, like any other worker performing their craft, and she temporarily forgot about the wretched killing Andaris with their bare hands off to one side as she found Neruda's wound reopening a few times. With a great deal of effort, she drained all of her mana pool that remained, even trying to heal the dark bruise around the safely closed wound at the surface of the skin.

Panting for breath from mana burn, Kenda continued to hold her patient with Rynd as the watched her to make sure she was still coherent. A rather sappy look formed in Neruda's eyes as she looked up as Kenda almost apologetically. "You're the bigger person," she said in an equally sappy tone.

Shaking her head, Kenda only laughed at herself, trying to comprehend that this was the same person who'd attacked her in Falonaar so many months ago. "No, hun...I just-"

And then the ground shook with what felt like more than an explosion.


	10. Unsung Heroes of Suramar

Neruda held on to Kenda's arm a little more tightly until the tremor that had shaken the ground stopped. The noise obviously came from far, far away, but it thundered over the Sanctum of Order regardless of distance. Strangely, none of the plants or curiously delicate pieces of elven decor were disturbed, and the shock of the tremor itself didn't feel normal when compared to earthquakes. The wretched, however, appeared plainly agitated.

"What that be?" she asked out loud, though she soon realized that nobody would be able to answer.

The wretched all ran past them on a war path toward the exit, though since they'd already done their job, nobody stopped them. The First Arcanist had been clawed and bitten to death by the wrinkly, deranged wretched, and all of the ley lines which had been visibly trailing into her body were gone entirely. By the time the wretched had left the Sanctum Depths, Rynd had put the pieces of the puzzle together.

"The mission of the several hundred of us who were sent here was to assassinate Andaris because the power barrier of the Nighthold was bound to her," the druid said thoughtfully. "That sound might have been the barrier's end."

Neruda's eyes lit up as if the news helped her fight off the residual effects of the poison. "So we accomplished what hundreds of people couldn't?" she asked hopefully, almost childlike in her tone.

Kenda tried looking around for any other visual cue that they'd really done it, but aside from the tremor and the disappearance of the glowing key lines, she saw nothing. "Well, I guess that be it...maybe we need to go outside and look." She turned her head back toward her temporary ally. "Can you walk?"

The question seemed to embarrass Neruda slightly, but after feeling the space where the wound once was, she appeared reassured. "It doesn't hurt now; thank you both," she replied as she sat up with their help. "It feels weird, but not threatening or painful." The stood up without their help, but remained close to them as they started to inspect the Depths. "You're sure all the guards are dead?"

Rynd pointed toward the exit and walked ahead. "We weren't able to convince any of them that their devotion was misplaced," he replied in disappointment. "The goddess guides whom she wills."

The three of them returned to the secret hallway which they'd used to enter, finding the entire Sanctum empty on their way out. "Where my brother be?" Kenda asked Rynd as their ears were met by the sounds of a distant battle before they'd even emerged at ground level.

"I believe he ran to the surface with the wretched to see what caused the tremor. At least, he seemed to be following them; I only saw him from the corner of my eye."

They all emerged at ground level, finding Rakash staring at the far end of Suramar's oceanbound side at the very edge of the safety railing overlooking the lower tiers of the city. All three of them rushed to join him, amazed at what they saw.

With the power barrier down over the Nighthold, the forces of Azeroth hadn't waited to storm it and stop Elisande and, ostensibly, Gul'dan. The sky above them was almost blotted out by the sheer number of gargoyles, skeletal gryphons, bat riders, and even a frost wyrm. The Forsaken had stormed Suramar in full force, and every visible street in the city was flooded with a mass of skeleton soldiers, ghouls, and nightborne zombies flowing toward the Nighthold like a tsunami. There were the odd blood elf or night elf units mixed in, alongside the wretched who'd joined the flood, but the undead seemed to have largely taken the charge.

"Figures," Neruda laughed in a cynical, almost sad manner. "High Priestess Tyrande and Lady Liadrin lead the initial charge, and then Sylvanas and these 'Restless Dead' people come in to steal the glory. She's probably in there somewhere, surrounded by them like escorts."

Despite Rynd also being a member of the Alliance, he pat his horned counterpart on the shoulder in an attempt to temper her criticism. "Personalities will be forgotten in time; whoever leads the final purge of the Nighthold, the most important detail is that the Legion will be put on the defensive on this day," he said softly.

Neruda seemed unsatisfied in her pessimism. "So that's it, then? All these amassed armies from every race and nation on the face of Azeroth were impotent, were absolutely powerless to breach the Nighthold until merely four people brought down Andaris...but nobody will know it was us?"

Rynd tried unsuccessfully to show her the bright side. "Well..."

"Well, what? If we tell people that the four of us were the sole reason that this charge we see before us is even possible, why should they believe us? We did all this work, but I can guarantee you that before the day is over, there will already be dozens of other people lying and claiming _they_ were the ones who brought Andaris down. We have no witnesses except the wretched, and they don't seem mentally competent."

More than any exchange they'd had, Kenda most of what she needed to know about Neruda's fundamental character in the horned elf's dismay. Pulling aside the person who'd threatened to kill her three times, she tried in earnest to solve a problem of despair that she found both pitiful and annoying.

"Neruda...why should we _care_?"

As it had so many times, the elf's jaw dropped open in indignant shock, but Kenda didn't grant her the opportunity to go on a rant.

"No matter what anybody be saying, _we_ know that we made this possible when everyone else was wasting their time killing demons in the streets despite knowing they'd just come back. Nobody can be telling _us_ about what really happened. And nothing else can affect us."

"Yes it can! If people knew how great our team was, they'd adore us! Are you really pretending that wouldn't make you feel good inside? To be loved by all?"

"I can really tell you that it wouldn't matter to me cause it wouldn't be helping me. Let's say people know and crowds congratulate us, throw gold at us, name streets after us. For how long? Will those people pay our bills? Feed our families? Sure, maybe for a while. Maybe until the next global crisis be coming. And then new leaders gonna rise, maybe another group of four people will make it all possible, and people gonna forget. Budgets will run low, fansourced money would go bye bye, those streets with our names would have hookers and garbage heaps on them. That's life. Time forgets names and faces except a few."

Neruda folded her arms around herself. The way the light breeze blew a purple strand of hair over her face looked exceptionally emo, and her visage was one of a goblin child learning that the Kezan holiday gift bot wasn't real. "I don't...I can't find the value in this. Or maybe justice; that's the word I'm looking for." She let out a long sigh. "I thought we'd be champions."

"Who can say we not?" Kenda replied quietly even as the final battle continued to rage toward the Nighthold. "Why should you let other people control what you be, who you be, how you be defined? If nobody be paying your bills, feeding your family, then why should they be choosing your reality anyway?"

The breeze continued to tickle everyone's long ears for a moment as they watched the surprisingly swift conclusion of the battle. After the deaths of a few hundred during the failed first attempt at storming the Sanctum, and probably the deaths of a few hundred more elsewhere in the city, the Insurrection at Suramar came to a swift end. The power barrier was a strong front, but without it, the Duskwatch-Legion pact fell apart in minutes. The very top spire of the Nighthold was actually torn off and thrown into the sea by a frost wyrm, and the main doors and outer walls of the building were destroyed and smeared by the ranks of armored skeletons. There was very little for the four heroes of the day to do but watch.

When Neruda sighed the second time, she didn't sound so depressed.

"You're right...you're absolutely right. I only wish I hadn't spent so many years dreaming of Ada and Nevis' approval."

"Everything that has happened to us, all of us, led us here," Rynd replied, breaking a few more moments of silence. "Don't regret the past...just choose differently in the future."

Cheers were already erupting from the non-undead members of the invasion force, causing a sort of ripple effect as ranks and ranks of soldiers jumped up and down. What few units of demons were still visible began to retreat, quickly being cut down by the victors. After less than ten minutes - less time than Neruda had spent beating the hell out of Kenda earlier - Elisande and Gul'dan had apparently been killed. The Insurrection, and with it the entire Nightfallen Rebellion, was over.

"So what do we do now?" Neruda asked.

Breathing the salty air deeply, Kenda could finally feel the burn of fatigue beyond simple mana depletion. They'd all survived one of the ugliest parts of an dreadful battle, and they could sleep easily knowing what they'd achieved, the whole world be damned. That being said...it was over. There was no need for them to wait while the main order of battle ran one final sweep through the city.

"We don't need to be waiting here...we did our part. For now. And I gotta feeling that we won't be having much time to rest before Azeroth storms the Broken Shore a second time."

Without waiting for anyone else to add anything inspirational, Rakash nearly knocked them over as he stole Neruda's hearthstone from her belt. "Dalaran the best place to rest," he said as he activated the device and started to warp them all back to the floating, neutral city. "Let's have a drink."

"You smell like dirt and moldy plywood!" she snapped back in reaction to the swift act of theft.

"Yeah, he likes to take care of himself," Kenda chuckled as she slapped Neruda on the back. "He be a gentleman like that."

In another first, Neruda practically went cross-eyed at the comment which made perfect sense to forest trolls but none at all to her. "Dafuq?" the horned night elf replied quizzically.

Rynd appeared as weary as Kenda at the mention of rest. "I suppose that's the best idea for now...I think we could all use a break."

As the green energy started to swirl around them, the demon hunter appeared to calm down a bit, knowing that they'd return to a safe haven soon enough. The shadow hunter grabbed her hand and forced it into a shake, garnering a confused look in reply.

Their friendship would most assuredly be temporary given the tension between factions, especially Undercity and Gilneas. But whatever happened, Kenda was glad that she and Neruda had met, however rough the start of their acquaintance had been. As the magic of the hearthstone displaced them from Suramar into Dalaran, she silently hoped they might fight next to each other, rather than against each other, again one day.


End file.
